Digital Strategist – by Silu Modi

There’s a great story about Pablo Picasso.

Some guy told Picasso he’d pay him to draw a picture on a napkin. Picasso whipped out a pen and banged out a sketch, handed it to the guy, and said, “One million dollars, please.”
“A million dollars?” the guy exclaimed. “That only took you thirty seconds!”
“Yes,” said Picasso. “But it took me fifty years to learn how to draw that in thirty seconds.”

Some time ago, a friend of mine that was working as a writer for a TV show asked me how he could go about setting up a basic website for himself. I pointed him to a cheap host and a where he could get a free 30-day trial version of Dreamweaver. He wrote me back a few days later with a link to his website. He also (jokingly) said that he’s amazed people pay me to help them with their websites when, with a copy of Dreamweaver, he was able to do it himself for next to no cost. I replied that most people have a copy of Microsoft Word. Why would anyone pay him to write when they can do it themselves?

The tool, or the end result of using the tool, is not special. I use the same tools anyone else does. It’s starting from a blank screen, knowing what you need to do, knowing what your audience wants and delivering it with consistency and quality that make the practitioner more valuable than the tool.

Having hundreds of friends on Facebook, thousands of followers on Twitter and dozens of cool iPhone apps does not make one a Social Media expert. Being able to solve a business problem and deliver the results a client requires, perhaps using social media as one of the tools, makes one an expert.