Participation in your community

At Sean O'Driscoll's blog, he recently wrote a blog contemplating the nature of participation in communities around the internet. First off, an amazing amount of companies do not notice what is being said about them in conversations around the internet. They may or may not be positive, but if a customer is caring enough to write about a product or service, then the company should take the time to listen and communicate with those customers.
O'Driscoll defines participation as: taking explicit external engagement actions. Start a blog, comment on others blogs, launch an ideation site, answer questions in your own forums, contribute content to a wiki, tag, rate, etc, etc, etc.
So those who participate can start a blog, begin by editing wikis or participating in other blog comments. The most important aspect to this, however, is to participate first by listening to the conversation. It is important to read the blogs and comments in order to fully understand the community one is dealing with. What are some important parts that should be observed when first doing this? Know what people are saying about you, know what else they are talking about besides your interest, know where they are having these conversations, who the key bloggers are and how big is the span of the conversation? If you can take the time to listen to your community of bloggers and participants, then it will be easier to take a step and join that community.