Key components for successful personal branding on social media. Stefani Kirilova 1 DEGREE THESIS Arcada University of Applied Sciences Degree Programme: International Business Identification number: 16540 Author: Stefani Kirilova Title: Branding your personality on social media – the power of pictures, videos and captions combined. Supervisor (Arcada): Christa Tigerstedt Commissioned by: Abstract: The thesis is about finding the key components for successful personal branding on social media. Thorough research of the Facebook, Youtube and Instagram platforms has been performed in order to better understand the essence of presenting a brand as a personality. Research of three already established Finnish influencers Youtube, Instagram and Facebook) is in focus. A look has been put to the power of pictures, captions and videos, a comparison between the engagement rates and posting patterns has been made for all three researched influencers in order to notice any reoccurring themes between them that might help readers with their own personal branding action plans. Attention has also been paid to target language, visual quality and quantity of the content as well as controversial topics such as making viral videos and handling negativity. The findings in the empirical part give readers a more concrete example of how they can make revenue by branding their own personality online. The research is qualitative and the method used is purposive sampling. Three Finnish online influencers on Instagram, youtube and facebook have been chosen and their marketing efforts have been observed for a period of two months during which indicators such as posting patterns, quantity of content, engagement rates and exponential growth have been transcribed with the help of an online software NapoleonCat and the statistics website SocialBlade. Keywords: Blogging, Social Media, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Influencers, Self-branding. Number of pages: Language: English Date of acceptance: 2 CONTENTS Figures............................................................................................................................... 5 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 7 1.1 Research aim and research questions ................................................................. 7 1.2 Demarcation ....................................................................................................... 8 2 Theoretical framework .............................................................................................. 8 2.1 Personal branding ............................................................................................. 11 2.2 The person behind the brand? .......................................................................... 14 2.3 Online personal branding ................................................................................. 16 2.3.1 Target language ............................................................................................ 18 2.4 Visual marketing and branding ........................................................................ 18 2.5 Handling negativity .......................................................................................... 21 2.6 The social media............................................................................................... 23 2.7 Youtube ............................................................................................................ 23 2.7.1 How does making money work with Youtube ............................................ 24 2.7.2 How to make viral videos ............................................................................ 26 2.7.3 Things to look out for with YouTube .......................................................... 28 2.8 Instagram .......................................................................................................... 28 2.8.1 The importance of hashtags, keywords and tags ......................................... 29 2.9 Facebook .......................................................................................................... 30 2.10 Blogging platforms ........................................................................................... 31 2.10.1 How to blog? ................................................................................................ 32 2.11 Other tools ........................................................................................................ 33 3 3 Methodology ........................................................................................................... 34 3.1 Approach .......................................................................................................... 34 3.2 Data collection.................................................................................................. 35 NapoleonCat software provides .................................................................................. 36 About Social Blade ..................................................................................................... 37 3.3 Data analysis and interpretation ....................................................................... 37 4 Analysis................................................................................................................... 38 4.1 Instagram .......................................................................................................... 38 4.1.1 Marianna Mäkelä ......................................................................................... 38 4.1.2 Maiju Voutilainen (mansikkka) ................................................................... 42 4.1.3 Miisa Rotola-Pukila ..................................................................................... 46 4.2 Facebook .......................................................................................................... 50 4.2.1 Maiju Voutilainen ........................................................................................ 50 4.2.2 Miisa Rotola-Pukila ..................................................................................... 51 4.2.3 Marianna Mäkelä ......................................................................................... 51 4.3 Youtube ............................................................................................................ 54 4.3.1 Maiju Voutilainen ........................................................................................ 54 4.3.2 Miisa Rotola-Pukila ..................................................................................... 55 4.4 Comparison between Maiju and Miisa............................................................. 56 5 Interpretation and discussion. ................................................................................. 59 5.1 Identifying the brand ........................................................................................ 59 5.2 Content optimization ........................................................................................ 60 5.3 Being viral ........................................................................................................ 63 6 Conclusions ............................................................................................................. 64 6.1 Ethical considerations ...................................................................................... 65 6.2 Future research ................................................................................................. 65 4 References ....................................................................................................................... 66 FIGURES Figure 1 Branding Attributes (Aaker 1996, 79). The personal branding attributes have been modified by Siina Hietajärvi (Rovaniemi, 2012, page 17), ............................................... 13 Figure 2 The five phases of life, WILSON, Jerry S., and BLUMENTHAL, Ira. Managing Brand You : 7 Steps to Creating Your Most Successful Self ............................................ 14 Figure 3: an example of a heat map of the widely popular GuardianUnlimited [2013] [Ref. 22.03.2017] ........................................................................................................................ 20 Figure 4: Marianna Mäkelä interactions Graph ................................................................. 39 Figure 5: Marianna Mäkelä profile post engagement by hours. ........................................ 39 Figure 6: Marianna Mäkelä post engagement by days. ..................................................... 40 Figure 7: Marianna Mäkelä Instagram post screenshot ..................................................... 41 Figure 8: Marianna Mäkelä collaborations. Made on excel with data available on 18.09.2017.......................................................................................................................... 42 Figure 9: Maiju Voutilainen interactions graph. ................................................................ 43 Figure 10: Maiju Voutilainen profile post engagement by hours. ..................................... 43 Figure 11: Maiju Voutilainen profile post engagement by days........................................ 44 Figure 12: Maiju Voutilainen Instagram post screenshot. ................................................. 45 Figure 13: Maiju’s collaboration hashtags. .......................................................................