Entrepreneurs' Personal Branding Model in Virtual Space (Instagram)

The increasing use of social networks and its effect on communication and interactions has created new opportunities for the use of social networks, particularly Instagram, which these days is a tool for entrepreneurs' interactions, communications and their business growth. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to present the entrepreneurs' personal branding model in Instagram. This paper has been conducted with a qualitative approach and grounded theory method. In this study, by theoretical and snowball sampling method, 20 entrepreneurs on instagram were interviewed, then the data analyzed and during open coding stage, 1052 basic conceptual statements, and 66 categories of axial coding and 6 main factors of selective coding, were identified. According to the results, the main phenomenon of this research is entrepreneurs' personal branding in Instagram( personal branding positioning, Create a strong brand) which has been affected by causal conditions(income increase, Cultural and Art Factors, Educational Attitude, Brand Performance Improvement), contextual factors(Structural Management, Audience Management, Brand Personality Impact), the intervening factors(inefficiency in branding, economic conditions, legal infrastructure) and through strategies(Branding techniques, identification, differentiation, brand management) lead to 4 outcomes categories(brand association, entrepreneur brand stabilization, business development, brand image) which is helpful not only for researchers but also entrepreneurs.