Building Physicians’ Personal Brand and Boosting Online Return: The Role of Social Media Engagement
本研究基于社交媒体可供性理论，利用中国最大社交媒体平台及其关联医疗平台的数据，发现医生通过社交媒体参与打造个人品牌能显著提升在线咨询业务，且话题丰富性会强化这一间接效应。
As social media has become prevalent, its beneficial role in expertise development and social networking has drawn the attention of healthcare professionals. However, limited research has examined how physicians obtain online returns via efforts on social media, and few studies focus on physicians’ personal branding. Set in a joint context of social media and online healthcare community, this study investigates how physicians’ personal branding influences their online return drawing on social media affordances theory. We validate the proposed hypotheses using empirical data collected from one of China’s largest social media platforms and its linked online healthcare platform. The results verify the positive effect of physicians’ personal branding on online consultation business and the mediation role of social media engagement. Furthermore, we find that the topic richness strengthens the indirect effect of personal branding on physicians’ online return via social media engagement. This study thus enriches the research on personal branding and social media engagement and offers insights for practitioners and scholars alike on the success of personal branding.