A Proposal for a Personal Branding Support Service in Social Media Times

Abstract

Social media such as Twitter and Facebook have become popular. In the age of social media, many people have become more active online. For example, about half of all global active Internet users are on Facebook (Perry 2012). Personal branding is a very important strategy to build on an individual's strengths, and this kind of branding is expected to contribute to self-actualization. Therefore, the presence of mentors who advise users to discover their own strong points for self-actualization is necessary. In this paper, we propose a personal branding support service, Mentors, which connects mentors and mentees. The core concept is: "Everyone has the face of both a mentor and mentee." The key function is sharing stages of self-analysis in human life design: Determining value, creating a mission, and forming a strategy. From this function, a good match between a mentor and mentee can be found. The program aims to improve human life by understanding the client's strengths and using social media effectively. Future work includes launching Mentors and evaluating its service.