the strength of weak ties on facebook: an artefact for personal branding

Messarra, Mione, ICTO, 2016 1

The Strength of Weak Ties on Facebook: An artefact for

Personal BrandingNasri Messarra, Anne Mione

MRM, Université de Montpellier

http://www.umontpellier.fr/


Context et QuestionContext Literature Problem Method Results Discussion

The concept of “personal branding” is make popular by Tom Peters (1997) in his article “The Brand Called You”. It is used by celebrities like Justin Bieber (Rein, Kotler, and Shields, 2006) and leaders in business and politicsThanks to Online Social Networks, it becomes an accessible tool for all (Shepherd 2005) Can a brand control and optimize this tool on Facebook?



LiteratureContext Literature Problem Method Results Discussion

Personal Branding (Montoya, 2002):- The Law of Specialization: limit yourself to one subject- Law of Persistence: Do. Repeat. Do again.- Law of Visibility: visibility is more important than ability as long as the brand is not popular=> How to promote visibility?



LiteratureContext Literature Problem Method Results Discussion

- Diffusion to bridging nodes can increase visibility by transmitting information to nodes outside the circle of influence (Burt, 2004, 2009)- WoM and the Strength of Weak Ties or SWT (Granovetter, 1973)- The importance of strong ties as a support group and the importance of weak ties to diffuse WoM (Granovetter, 1983)- The need to analyze the SWT dynamically through time (Granovetter, 1983)



Research Problem

Context Literature Problem Method Results Discussion

Can Granovetter’s SWT (1973, 1983) serve a personal branding strategy on Facebook?

Our idea is that increasing the number of weak ties and decreasing the number of strong ties in a circle of friends serves a personal branding strategy because it optimizes the diffusion of the statuses of a personal profile:

To test this hypothesis, we conceive and test an artefact in a real case scenario



Method


• Design Science Research Methodology or DSRM (Peffers, 2007):

1. Definition of the problem: the need of a base for strategic marketing on OSN (Hoffman, 2012)

2. Objectives: Show that SWT can be a marketing strategy for personal branding on Facebook

3. Develop an artefact: We conceive a method to progressively increase the percentage of weak links in the network of friends of a Facebook user

4. Demonstrate the efficiency of the artefact: We experiment the artefact on the profile of a satiric author over a period of two years

5. Evaluate the results: increased virality, engagement and the publication of the statuses in a book by a professional editor

6. Communicate the results



Method


• The Artefact

FriendsFriends

Friends who receive the

message

Posting a status

Weak links (in real life)

Strong links

Facebook

Some strong links send a friend request

Some weak linkssend a friend request

Request Is accepted

Repeat

RequestIs ignored

Injection of weak links in the network of friends



Results


211

0

178

214

232253



Cont

ribut

ions • SWT is a valid strategy on OSN

Theoretical

• An artefact that can be reused to promote personal branding on Facebook

Methodological

• The use of SWT as a viral marketing strategy on Facebook

Managerial




Limits• This artefact was only tested on one Facebook profile. It would

be interesting, to validate this method, to run the artefact on more than one profile.• This experiment only takes into consideration one element of the

five elements of viral marketing: the initial seeding population (Hinz, 2011; Liu-Thompkins, 2012). It would be interesting to do similar experiments will considering the other four elements: the messenger (Valente, 2010), the content (Rowley, 2008), the structure of the network (Bampo, 2008) and the attitude of the receivers (Arndt, 1967).

Context Literature Problem Methode Results Discussion


the strength of weak ties on facebook: an artefact for personal branding

Social Media