Are we real in the online world? No, we are not. According to Brad Feld, managing director at the Foundry Group, most businesses are not authentic in the social space. “A wide number of companies view social media as a business tool and the problem is that they do stuff that’s not authentic,” he said at a panel on social media at the Thunderbird Global Business Dialogue held in Glendale, AZ on November 10-11.

We must be authentic in the social space, says Feld. Offer your expertise, share and give “what you think in your soul and people will find you.” Building domain knowledge and expertise in a field that you are passionate about is critical to excel in this space.

We are at the beginning of ” a 20-year curve,” that is radically shifting the way people interact. Social media motivates people to feed information to the “machine.”  According to Feld, “trying to resist the machine is futile.”

Spend 30 minutes every day trying to gain and share your expertise using online tools.