In advance of his keynote today at the South by Southwest conference, PRNewser spoke with web entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki about a variety of topics, notably how such a well connected person such as himself still finds value in working with a PR firm. (Kawasaki employs Porter Novelli.)

“I may know a lot of people, but that doesn’t mean I know every blogger. Take something like Mashable, they have ten reporters. I don’t know all ten of them. I don’t know which one is the most logical for me,” he said.

When asked about what PR firms can do in addition to providing “arms and legs” support such as scheduling media briefings, Kawasaki said, “The strategic level is about…should it be Mashable, or should it be BoingBoing? These are crucial questions and I’m in the thick of it, and I don’t know, so I gotta believe that some people who are not in the thick of it and not hanging out at things like this, they really don’t know. You wouldn’t just buy QuickBooks and then decide to do all your books, you would hire an accounting firm. And this is the same thing, you hire the pros who know how to do it.”

Kawasaki also said it’s important for PR firms to “just beat the crap out of you and get you prepared for the tough questions.” He likened this to the CEO who never gets told to make changes, but is rather just surround by an entourage of “yes men/women” at both the company and the PR firm. Kawasaki said it is PR’s “moral obligation” not to do this, and to provide constructive feedback.

In terms of his keynote today with Chris Anderson, Kawasaki said he likes to stay at a “5,000 foot view as opposed to a 50,000 foot view” and have people come away with tactical advice they can apply to their businesses. A businessman himself, Kawasaki closed the interview by mentioning his Alltop and now MyAlltop service, a valuable directory of blogs by topic – he calls it an “online magazine rack” – that PR pros can use when researching bloggers.