Joining in on social media conversation can daunting — even downright scary. It can be hard to know where to start.

Earlier this week, I wrote about how to get started with with social media. Feedback was good, but there were several were still in need of a bit more prompting. FriendFeed and Twitter were regular conversation topics. The chats always came back to, “what would I say? Who is good to follow? No one cares what I ate for breakfast.”

Don’t start with a post. Start by listening.

Before you jump into the conversation, know your audience. In this case, know where people are coming from. Are people talking about topics you’re interested in? Start your social media engagement by knowing what is being said, who is saying it and what the tone is before weighing in.

As for who to follow, I can name quite a few, but you may not be interested in the same topics I am. That said, FriendFeed does a nice job of displaying who you find interesting and who is interested in you. The statistics below come from the last 30 days of activity on FriendFeed. “People I find in