Last night, I was among four presenters who talked at an EO Toronto event about social media. While most people at the event are using social media, many of them haven’t implemented it within their businesses.

Among the questions was how to get started with social media, and how to decide what services to use. The most basic piece of advice was to listen to where people where are talking about your company, products, services, industry and competitors. At the very least, it shows whether conversations are happening, and whether it makes sense to get involved.

At the same time, listening also offers insight into where these conversations are happening so companies can determine where their social media efforts should go.

For example, if few people are talking about a company, its products services and rivals on Facebook, then making Facebook one of your major social media priorities is probably not a good idea. On the other hand, if a lot of activity is happening on Twitter, putting together a strategic and tactical plan for Twitter makes complete sense.

Another benefit of listening before talking is it provides a pretty good roadmap. I’m a big believer in a walk-before-you-run approach, which means doing one or two things really well before expanding to other social media services.

The idea of listening before getting into the game is straightforward but for many people who haven’t embraced social media yet, the landscape can be confusing and intimidating because it can be difficult to decide how to start and where to go. Listening make the process a lot easier by providing a solid lay of the land so that if you do get into social media, some costly errors can be avoided.