Making Employee Influencers : Exploring Personal Branding on Linkedin and If it Leads to Pro-Social Organizational Behaviors or Employee Advocacy

Within social media networks, a new form of influencers is emerging in the form of the employee influencer. The development of online advocacy tools such as LinkedIn Elevate now allows companies to directly leverage these employee influencer efforts. However, it is not understood if employee influencers will display similar personal branding characteristics as mainstream influencers. The study analyzes 363 profiles of employees at a British pharmaceutical company using multinomial logistic regression to explore the predictability of employee advocacy and pro-social organizational behavior based on personal branding. Our findings show personal branding is likely to predict advocacy. We also found that personal branding can predict pro-social behavior towards other individuals. Certain elements of personal branding on LinkedIn can help organizations to determine which employees might emerge as employee influencers. This research contributes to our understanding of personal branding on online platforms, employee advocacy and how we can determine potential ‘employee influencers’