How much should you show?

Getting bookings is the main goal for DJs and for a large part dependent upon effective self-promotion. DJs are creative performers who produce electronic music. As DJs, like other celebrities in general, struggle with how much they “should” reveal about themselves through personal branding, which is a tool for self-promotion, this study focused on offering empirical evidence for showing different levels of their ‘private self’. The DJ’s gender was taken into consideration as DJs operate in a male-dominated industry (the EDM industry), which usually leads to the audience having strong expectations regarding the performance of identity. The aim of the analysis was to answer the following research questions: ‘To what extent are there differences in the personal branding effects in the display of different levels of the DJ’s private self on the audience’ intention to visit their events?’ and ‘To what extent is this difference contingent upon the DJ’s gender?’. By conducting an online experiment in the shape of a 2 (private self: high level versus low level) x 2 (gender DJ: male versus female) between subject factorial design, insights into the different effects between the groups were obtained. We found out that the attitude towards the DJ and the perceived expertise are factors that play a significant role in the audience’ decision-making process. The results demonstrated that it is for female as well as male DJs effective to show private photos (high level private self) in order to trigger a favorable attitude within the audience which in turn leads to a higher intention to visit an event where the DJ is performing. Moreover, we found that it is only for male DJs important to show professional photos (low level private self) as opposed to private photos (high level private self) in order to be perceived as more of an expert which in turn leads to a higher intention to visit an event where the DJ is performing. In contrast, a female DJ was somewhat similar seen as an expert no matter what type of information (private vs. professional) she showed. The latter was the opposite of what we expected based on literature on male-dominated industries. We conclude that showing different levels of the private self can positively contribute to triggering an intention within the audience to visit events where DJs perform while the ‘traditional’ expectations for self-presentation of females and males when operating in a male-dominated industry seem to be fairly different in the context of online personal branding on Facebook for DJs.