Great Question at LinkedIn Answers from Walter Pike - asking what companies should look for in a Social Media firm. Is it a PR firm or Ad Agency? My response below.
1) Check the web for their presence. Ask for their social media expert, and type their name into Google. Look at the company blog. Is it updated, ranked high, and do people link to it? Are they on Twitter, Facebook? Look at examples of other campaigns they rate as successful.
2) Ask them what results they've achieved with a campaign. If they can't tell you, then they haven't bothered to track past campaigns, which means they'll have no experience tracking yours.
3) Don't ask what they can do. Social media firms should be solution agnostic. Instead, ask yourself what you want to accomplish, and then ask them how they would accomplish it.
4) You're not hiring them for social media. You're hiring them for marketing/pr/advertising/search, and they're using social media tools to accomplish those goals.
5) Be smart with your budget: I'd say as many as 80% of "Social Media" experts have never been paid for their work, and that includes people inside very large agencies. Large agencies have no clue how to bill for this, which can mean you're paying 10X what you would with a small agency or an individual to get the same results.
6) : Don't buy the hype - look for execution: A large number of followers or friends or subscribers doesn't make you a social media firm or consultant. Just because you're good at self-promotion doesn't make you good at helping another company do the same.
7) Look for integration - the best social media campaigns take advantage of work you're already doing and magnify it by putting it online. SMM works best in conjunction with traditional and other online marketing.
This is what I'm looking for in candidates. Are they enamored of their tools, or of the results of using those tools? And in terms of salary - you're getting paid for your background, not your social media experience. It's an important distinction.
