Personal Brand Equity in LinkedIn: Impression Management as an Antecedent and Behaviors as Consequences

This research explores how Personal Brand Equity in professional social media is influenced by impression management and the online behaviors of users of this social media platform. Using a path analysis, the relationship between Impression Management and Personal Brand Equity was, as expected, strong and positive. The paths between brand equity and frequency of behaviors such as use of LinkedIn to network were significant and strong while other behaviors such as frequency of use of LinkedIn to ask for recommendations were not significant. The contribution of this paper is to be the first to analyze this relationship to understand better personal branding utilizing impression management theories.