Personal Branding of Professors in Social Media: A Choice or a Necessity in Our days?

Personal branding is the process in which people and their careers are marked as a brand. It aims to create a branded asset and equity that is related to a particular person or individual. Through personal branding, an individual strives to actively manage his skills and experiences. These accomplishments usually require extensive financial support for promotion, to create brand awareness and build up loyalty. Social media, with its ideological and technological structure, allows individuals to be promoted as a brand in a relatively cheap and efficient manner. Many scholars are not pro to the idea of their research work to be promoted in social media, for fear of being copied. Traditional marketing methods for researchers or university professors include the pursuit of conferences, publication of various articles, books, etc. They are guided by the motto: “Let your work speak for you”. But this concept is rapidly becoming elusive in this digital era, because no one will be informed about your work, your researches and your professional life if you do not promote them. Personal branding in social media is already essential to long-term career success. This study explores how professors—in this case those of the Polytechnic University of Tirana—are engaged with personal branding, its impact in career development and success, as well as focuses on certain skills that influence the process and the individual outcomes from personal branding. This study also examines the growth of social media and its impact in personal branding. It describes how everything is influenced by the Internet and explains how this eventually affects professional achievements.