On the heels of its introduction of the social media press release, SHIFT Communications has introduced a 30-page PDF guide to the world of social media aimed squarely at the public relations community. As SHIFT’s Todd Defren points out on his blog, regular participants and readers in the PR blogosphere won’t find much new here, but most practitioners aren’t anywhere near up to speed on the tools that are altering the communication landscape or how to use them.

The free download—titled “PR 2.0 Essentials: A Necessarily Living Document”—is neatly organized, covering RSS, blogs, podcasts, wikis, social networks and social bookmarking. There’s also a section on memes, one on the social media press release, and one on IM and SMS. Two additional sections provide links to tools and other reference materials.

Each section covers not only the fundamentals, but also material of particular interest to PR practitioners, like how to pitch to bloggers, how to employ them as PR tactics, and why these tools and channels are important to clients.

Before anybody gets in an uproar about the “2.0” label, Tina Lang Stuart—SHIFT’s director of global strategies—explains it as the evolution from traditional PR practice to an emerging communications approach that recognizes and embraces social computing. This evolution, she writes in her introduction to the document…

...allows us to experiment with new tactics, explore new roles as communicators, and seek out hidden talents and abilities to eventually create a new PR portfolio. That???s why many of us are excited about PR 2.0. Do we understand it all? No! Will we make mistakes? Yes, many! But that???s part of the thrill and the nature of change.

As a primer for the PR world, this is a welcome addition and SHIFT should be applauded for taking the same approach the firm took to its social media press release, making it freely available to anyone who wants it.