There are two situations:
It is possible that an object is [NSNull null], or it is impossible.
Your application usually shouldn't use [NSNull null]; you only use it if you want to put a "null" object into an array, or use it as a dictionary value. And then you should know which arrays or dictionaries might contain null values, and which might not.
If you think that an array never contains [NSNull null] values, then don't check for it. If there is an [NSNull null], you might get an exception but that is fine: Objective-C exceptions indicate programming errors. And you have a programming error that needs fixing by changing some code.
If an object could be [NSNull null], then you check for this quite simply by testing
(object == [NSNull null]). Calling isEqual or checking the class of the object is nonsense. There is only one [NSNull null] object, and the plain old C operator checks for it just fine in the most straightforward and most efficient way.
If you check an NSString object that cannot be [NSNull null] (because you know it cannot be [NSNull null] or because you just checked that it is different from [NSNull null], then you need to ask yourself how you want to treat an empty string, that is one with length 0. If you treat it is a null string like nil, then test (object.length == 0). object.length will return 0 if object == nil, so this test covers nil objects and strings with length 0. If you treat a string of length 0 different from a nil string, just check if object == nil.
Finally, if you want to add a string to an array or a dictionary, and the string could be nil, you have the choice of not adding it, replacing it with @"", or replacing it with [NSNull null]. Replacing it with @"" means you lose the ability to distinguish between "no string" and "string of length 0". Replacing it with [NSNull null] means you have to write code when you access the array or dictionary that checks for [NSNull null] objects.