http://mashable.com/2011/10/02/digital-pr-tips/
1. Why do you think your firm is best suited for our needs? Why should we pick you?
2. Can you share multiple case studies from clients with budgets similar to ours that show how your firm combined traditional and digital PR tactics to achieve measurable results?
3. How will you manage my account? (Follow up questions here include: Who will be on my account team? How long have they been with your company? Who will set the strategy? Who will be my day-to-day contact? If the director of strategy is not the primary contact, what kind of skills and experience does the day-to-day contact bring to the relationship?)
4. What kinds of metrics do you use to evaluate the success of a PR campaign that integrates traditional and digital tactics? At what point in the implementation process does measurement occur? How do measurement tools inform PR campaigns? (Hint: Measurement shouldn’t happen last. One of the biggest benefits of digital communication is the ability to measure — and make necessary adjustments — mid-campaign.)
5. How do you incorporate social technology to strengthen traditional PR (i.e. media relations, community outreach, crisis communication or event planning)?
6. Conversely, how do you incorporate traditional PR tactics to give a boost to online activities?
7. What kind of experience do you have building and sustaining an online community? Can you offer concrete examples to illustrate how you’ve leveraged an online community to achieve bottom-line business goals?
8. What services do you use for media research? What’s your approach to pitching journalists? (Another hint: The best answers will focus on the need to do research and develop personalized pitches. If they blast press releases out to large databases, that’s probably not what you want.)
9. Do you treat bloggers like media, or do you approach blogger relations differently than traditional media outreach? Explain your approach. (Note: Bloggers answer to their community, while journalists answer to editors, so you can’t lump them together. If a firm preaching “integrated communication” treats them the same, it’s a major cause for concern.)
10. While we hope we never face a crisis situation, it’s better to be prepared than caught off-guard. Tell us about your experience managing a crisis situation that involved both online and offline stakeholders/audiences.
