Personal Branding as a Means of Promotion in Influencer Marketing Using the Examples of Brands Created by Bloggers

This work is devoted to the study of the use of a blogger’s personal brand in the communication of the brand that he created. The purpose of the work was to find out how a personal brand is used by a blogger in a communication and how such a communication of blogger brands is perceived by the audience. The fulfillment of the objectives of the study made it possible to understand the existence of interconnections in the communication of selected accounts and to study the audience's perception of the phenomenon of the transition of online opinion leaders to offline businessmen. The goal of this study was achieved using the triangulation method: combining the quantitative method in the form of content analysis and the qualitative one - focus groups online. As a result of the study, various categories were identified in the audience’s perception of this phenomenon and statistical links between the blogger’s accounts and his brand. The conclusions and recommendations of this work are important for understanding the development of the Russian influencing marketing industry and further work with bloggers on Instagram as communication channels with the target audience.