I was catching up on my industry reading and a post on PR Squared by Todd Defren caught my attention, “Quizzing a Prospective Partner on Social Media Know-How.” Todd provides a list of suggested questions for agencies looking for a social media partners, which is something I think we’ll see more of in this year’s RFPs. Usually I agree with a lot of what Todd has to say, but I *respectfully* think he missed the boat a bit on this one (go read his post and his questions, and then continue reading …)

First and foremost, it’s important to keep in mind that social media is about much more than just blogs. The majority of Todd’s questions are about blogging, which is odd coming from one of the social media press release’s biggest evangelists. In fact, these questions seem, at least to me, to be more appropriate when interviewing a new agency hire than they are for an agency partner. For example:

    Question 3: What are the top 3 blogs in our industry? Is this really relevant to a client? As a client, I can honestly say that I’m less concerned about what PR-related blogs an agency is reading/interacting with and much more interested in which 2-3 blogs they feel are most important to my company. AND, just like media influencers, do they strong relationships with those bloggers?

    Questions 5 and 6: What tools are you using to monitor conversations in the blogosphere? What percentage of your staff use RSS? (What is RSS?) Again, as a client, this is like asking what email they use … and I don’t care. All I care about is: are they up on my industry, my competitors and my company. What trends do they see impacting the PR program in the coming months? (Only those agencies actively monitoring the blogosphere will have the level of insight I’m looking for, which is key. But I don’t care how they’re monitoring).

My other challenge to this list is that looks at the blogging experience of the agency staff more than the social media expertise of the team. And yes, I realize there are no experts in this domain and that “expertise” is very subjective in this context. Specifically to Todd’s questions, I really like his first two because I don’t believe an agency can provide strong guidance without experience, and with something as new as social media, “just doing it” is probably the most direct path to experience. At the same time, I realize that not everyone has a blog or actively comments on blogs, and I sometimes that’s okay, too. Particularly in PR, where an agency’s role is seldom a spokesperson.

On the agency side, I was managing five accounts across five very different industries. For my particular clients’ needs, I don’t think participating in the PR blogosphere beyond reading and digesting content would have necessarily helped me serve my particular clients any better. Two had no interest in blogging (rightfully so at the time), a third was already an active blogger, and the other two were just beginning to take notice. My role was a facilitator, helping them interact with bloggers by tracking a handful of blogs and alerting them to topical posts that I thought they’d like to respond to.

As Forrester notes, there are several levels of participation with social media, and what’s an appropriate level for one client may be too much or too little for another. So clients looking for a social media partner need to understand what level of participation the agency and the proposed account team have, across multiple social media technologies; how the team approaches social media campaigns and what its collective viewpoint is around integrating social media campaigns into a larger PR program; and most importantly, what have they done with other clients. Why is why I love:

    Question 7: How has your agency used social media tools in campaigns for clients? What tools were used? What was the result? In retrospect, how might you have handled it differently? This question really gets into whether an agency “gets it” or is just blowing smoke. I’d also add a question asking for an example when the agency proactively recommended to a client not to use a social media tool, and why. And while I’m at is, I’d add an open ended question, “What are the top 3-5 most impactful social media technologies that your agency has integrated into PR campaigns, and what was the result?” For fun, you can even ask what the agency thinks is the least worthy social media technology to see who loves Second Life and who hates it.

One last suggestion: if you’re really looking for a social media partner who “gets” social media, why not skip the “PR 1.0″ RFP altogether and request agencies to pitch your business using the technology? It might be interesting to capture the proposal in a Wiki, with links to industry news and blogs that the team captured while researching. Bonus points to the agency that even captures the internal dialogue that usually accompanies a pitch using a password protected blog or discussion forum. They could even add a flickr photo stream of the team …