Hearsay Social's Clara Shih on Being Authentic

Her company was named a “Cool Vendor” earlier this month and, a week later, she won a “Changing the Game” award from Advertising Women of New York. But Clara Shih, the 30-year-old chief executive officer of Hearsay Social, feels her company is sometimes misunderstood. While a growing number of people understand how her software can keep tabs on employees and make sure they’re complying with company policies in the social media realm, she says a bigger benefit may be in gleaning who’s most effective in engaging customers online. “You want to know who’s building the business and leaving people satisfied,” says Shih. “Who can promote the brand in an authentic way?”

Authenticity, of course, is one of those fuzzy concepts that everybody wants but nobody can define. So I asked Shih, who also wrote The Facebook Era and sits on the Starbucks board, to share her ideas on how brands can be authentic online. Here’s what she had to say: