Who Am I? How Compelling Self-storytelling Builds Digital Personal Reputation

•Online profile descriptions are stories with defined stages.•The stories reflect the presence of archetypes.•The more the storyteller is able to emphasize a lesson learnt after the journey, the more the story told is powerful.•Powerful self-storytelling boosts personal online reputation.•Storytelling is an empowering co-creative behavior in online relational communities.

The work explores whether self-storytelling is a powerful predictor of personal reputation in a collaborative community of the sharing economy realm. By proposing that powerful self-storytelling allows an attractive positioning in respect to potential others, the paper extends the literature of brand storytelling and brand archetypes shifting the perspective to a personal level. This study adopts a qualitative–quantitative approach to investigate the meanings and stories contained in personal profile descriptions and their relation with reputation. Personal descriptions are interpreted as storytelling activities, labels/glosses that allow members to access the services of the community by facilitating personal reputation building. The findings show that powerful storytelling structures have defined phases and are crucial in reputation building when the story evolves in a metaphoric, symbolic lesson. The presence of archetypes, in particular the Sage and the Ruler, also confers reputational power to the stories. The results reveal opportunities for peer-to-peer communities, traditional companies, and social businesses. Marketers should design tools and platforms able to trigger consumers' desire to express their individuality through personal descriptions and suggest the drivers that affect reputation.