Social media is on the rise and everyone wants a piece of it.

But before even talking about using social tools for business purposes, how can a newcomer start learning the basics?

While reading a book or consulting a friend might be of great help, why not start using social media to learn social media? The best way to learn something is to jump right in!

Reading this blog post is perhaps the best start.

1. YouTube

Video content is fun and easy to consume. A simple search on YouTube will return tons of video results. Filter them by scanning through their titles, ratings, views and comments (part of social media). Here is one you can start with, by commoncraft:

Using keywords like “social media”, “web 2.0″ or “how to ______” in your search queries will help you find the videos more effectively. Oh and don’t miss this video on how social media is changing the way we communicate.

2. SlideShare

PowerPoint slides may not be as appealing as videos, but they are usually data rich, comprehensive and easily downloadable for future reference. Here’s one that is done up by my friend, Mindy from uPenn, “A Quick Introduction to Social Media Tools (And How They Can Help You)”

If you like the content she put together, feel free to follow her tweets and blog.

3. Twitter

There are several tweeps to follow if you wish to get fast pace and highly digestible information via Twitter. Being a micro-blogging site, its advantage and disadvantage both lie in its 140 characters limit. To get around it, links are used to direct you to more content.

Here are 5 tweeps that I recommend:

1. @mashable: Everyone in the social media family knows about this blog. Get great tweets about social media stuff by following them.

2. @briansolis: Reflective social media thinker. Co-founder of the Social Media Club.

3. @BuzzEdition: Social Media Enthusiast and creator of social media campaigns.

4. @kim: A friendly Twitter leader.

5. @PennOlson: That’s us!

4. Facebook

Like Twitter, Facebook also displays news feeds except that it allows more room for discussions. Here are 3 Facebook pages that I recommend:

1. Mashable (They are king when it comes to social media related stuff)

2. Dell – Social Media

3. Social Media Club

5. Blogs + RSS

There are many insightful blogs across the web that offer useful social media related content. For Penn Olson, we cover a mixture of topics like social media, business, marketing and humor.

You will soon find that each blog gives a different point of view on social media. With so much new information being generated everyday, it is sometimes hard to keep up.

RSS aggregators like Google Reader or Apple Mail collect new content from your favorite blogs in one  central place. There’s no need to visit them individually anymore. Learn more about RSS here.

Conclusion

You might be thinking that it is so much easier to search for information via Google or Yahoo. You might be right but many people who eventually drop out of social media are the ones who don’t try them at all. Getting over the barrier of using the countless number of tools out there is the first thing you should do.

The key is: You got to start using them to learn them. Period.