Leaders' personal branding and communication on professional social media platforms: motivations, processes, and outcomes

Personal branding is a proactive, planned, and strategic process one makes to communicate their unique value. Individuals engage in personal branding activities to manage their image and reputation that will help them stand out. With the development of digital technologies and platforms, individuals have increasingly taken their branding activities online. Although personal branding has been studied in various contexts, there is a lack of investigation into why and how organisational leaders develop their personal brands and the relationship between leaders' branding activities and organisational outcomes. Executive leaders of organisations not only represent themselves but also their organisations in personal branding communications. Thus, effective personal branding is beneficial to both the executive and the organisation. The current study aimed to explore the factors that drive executive leaders' personal branding efforts on professional social media platforms, specifically, LinkedIn. We also elaborated on strategies and tactics that leaders use to build their personal brands as well as different organisation-related outcomes from leaders' personal branding efforts. Through 25 in-depth interviews with senior organisational leaders in Lithuania, we were able to obtain insights related to the personal and business motivations behind leaders' personal branding activities, the process of personal branding, and benefits for organisations.