One reason it can be so intimidating for organizations to get started in social media is that there’s just so much information out there. Parsing through it all and trying to figure out what’s absolutely essential to understanding the basics can take a lot of time. Here are three eBooks that I’ve found extremely useful. They cut to the chase and give you the goods on social media:

Brink: A Social Media Guide From The Edge

Todd Defren, SHIFT Communications
Key Topics: Blogger relations; multimedia content marketing; social media news releases
Share this with: Internal communications team or PR agency counsel
Why it’s stellar: It’s absolutely unbelieveable how much goodness Todd packs into 40 pages. What I love about this eBook is that it gives several great case studies of how the folks at SHIFT have integrated social media with traditional PR methods. It’s not all pie-in-the-sky stuff, though. The last half is focused on innovative tactics, with more case studies to back them up.

Getting a Foothold in Social Media

Amber Naslund, Altitude Branding
Key Topic: Building online communities
Share this with: Upper-level managers who need basic SM rundown; community and customer service leaders
Why it’s stellar: This 16-page eBook is packed with links to plenty of online resources. But what makes it great is that it’s so simple. Amber lays out a high-level game plan for getting started. At each step of the plan, she tells you why that step is important and clear steps you can take to incorporate it into your existing marketing efforts.

The Essential Guide to Social Media

Brian Solis, PR2.0
Key Topics: Social sciences behind the social technologies; customer research; social mapping
Share this with: Senior marketing staff
Why it’s stellar: Really, I could have listed any of Brian’s five eBooks here. But I like the ”Essential Guide” because it delves into the principles of effective social media participation. He of course lists all the tools and platforms available but the real meat is that Brian lays out the purpose of these tools, the social sciences behind why people are drawn to communicate online and the importance of listening and customer research. He also touches on the resources (both time and money) needed to have a successful social media presence and the importance of having appropriate company user policies and guidelines when engaging online.

Also check out this Mashable.com list from a while back that lists even more eBook resources.

Feel free to share your links to other great resources in the comments.