Personal Brand Value and Social Media. The Top Football Players’ Case

Personal branding valuation and social media usage are new and empirically unexplored areas of research. The aim of the presented study is to determine how social media performance and sentiment are related to the value of a personal brand. Based on an example of 100 most valuable football players, in reference to transfermarkt.com and the sentione.com (sentiment analysis), the author points out the strongest correlations and cross-correlations between a personal brand value and the sentiment measured for social media such as forums, microblogs, blogs, portals, FB (Facebook), and photo & video platforms. The author claims that in the case of top football players' personal brands, competencies (professional first and social next) to a large extent determine their reputation. Presented findings suggest that social media is a perfect modern tool for sustaining personal brand equity and creating a final value through the relational capital creation