I’m afraid that this blog isn’t really going to answer this question, but I was intrigued whilst at BrightonSEO yesterday when I was asked “how do you get people to like you on Twitter?”

I don’t consider myself to be a social media expert, although I do like being social – I like to talk to people, find out interesting or fun titbits of information about peoples lives, share useful knowledge between people for the betterment of all of them

I also don’t think that I am exactly one of the most famous tweeters in the world, or all that widely known/liked just yet – whilst it is a terrible measure, I have only just gone past 700 twitter followers, and growth in that respect has been dwindling a little bit of late.

What I do think I have that perhaps the person asking does not, is quite an engaged follower/following relationship. I tweet quite a lot, about all sorts of topics ranging from SEO, music, film, I crack jokes and stories with people and probably, most of all, I tweet about Food and Rum

These are all things that make me, me! I love cooking, so I talk about it – quite a lot of people in my Twitterverse also seem to like food, and I think its somewhat expected of me now (I know my co-workers ask about it if I don’t tweet about food for a while).

I like a lot of types of music too. I listen to some blues and jazz music from time to time, and some of my twitter friends do too – The same goes with some of the rock music I listen to, or the hip hop that I put on from time to time. Over the last year, Twitter has become the main method of me finding new music to listen to – through word of mouth recommendations from people that I have spoken to enough to realise common interests.

I think that to get the most out of social relationships built up in these spheres you have to take the time to tweet – if you don’t have those conversations with people that draw you closer together, you limit the possibilities of how much influence them and how they can help you increase visibility of anything that you are trying to get visibility for.

I follow a lot of people in and around the SEO industry, but at the end of the day, many of the relationships I have formed with people have begun in completely unrelated conversations – you can then always talk about more work related issues at another time. Start the conversation somewhere that you have some middle ground to meet at, and build from there.

Sometimes it’s not going to work out perfectly – I know that some of my flippant tongue in cheek comments have been misinterpreted at times, and no doubt I will have ruffled some feathers along the way, but that was never my intention. I have cringed a couple of times reading back tweets, but thats just a part of the journey.

Ultimately, I doubt that there are many cut and dried rules about getting people to like you on Twitter, especially if you have to “try” to be liked – but my main 2 rules for my activities on social media platforms are:

1) Treat people the way you would like to be treated

And

2) Be yourself!

I’ll finish this post with a tweet I received from Nichola Stott after finally meeting her at BrightonSEO yesterday:

I fully intend to

I use Twitter  and Facebook fairly regularly and with the latest arrival on the scene, Google Buzz, there are potentially even more services vying for my attention.

I do however, use Twitter and Facebook very differently. The first social networking site that I used a lot was MySpace user, back when I worked at HMV. It proved to be a very good way of finding new music, finding when bands are touring near you, or even if a trek was needed to go further afield to see someone that you really liked. The problem was that it wasn’t a particularly good way to connect with my friends – I “met” up with some folks that I knew on there, but after I left HMV, and my urge to find new music all the time was somewhat reduced, I found MySpace a place that I spent less and less time.

I then moved on to Facebook – and this was an area to really connect with people that you used to know back in school, have met and got on with in short bursts, and wanted to find out more, and to keep in close touch with closer friends that due to busy lifestyles, I don’t see as much as we would like in person.

I like the basic premise of facebook, to send messages, to individual or groups  friends, be invited to events, see pictures of their latest events and get notified of birthdays (I have to admit to being fairly rubbish at remembering the exact dates of most of my friends birthdays). I do get a little annoyed with all the little game notifications from Farmville or some coffee shop game, but I have come to get rather blind to these most of the time.

Almost a year ago, I decided to join Twitter, primarily because I thought I should be on it for work (seeing as I work in Search Engine Optimisation). For the first 6 months or so I didn’t really get it, I flitted in and out, I pushed some content that I had written for the Vertical Leap Search Marketing blog, but I didn’t really engage much with what was going on with the others on there.

In the summer, I started to talk to other industry folks a bit more, engaging in conversations about what the latest news was, discussing items and issues that were the topic of the day, as well as sharing a bit of my personality and learning some more about these new people.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the differences between Twitter and Facebook, and for me it is fairly simple. I use Facebook to get in and stay in touch with those people that I really know (or have in the past known) quite well – I’m interested in seeing picture of their weddings, new children (I still find it odd that some school friends have multiple kids these days) and birthday/Christmas celebrations.

Twitter, I use to find more people that I would like to get to know – and I also feel much more of a member of a community as a result of frequent participation, with those that I follow, and those that follow me. Some people I am looking to learn things from, some people I hope I can teach a bit to, and the rest I hope we can have a bit of fun in between.

Some people on Twitter, I’ve now spoken to enough that I consider them friends, even though for the most part I haven’t met many of them. People like supaswag, jaamit, Yoshimi_S, Fearless_Shultz & rhyswynne are all people that are entertaining, engaging and provide useful advice and assistance when needed.

Should you want to, you can follow me at ismepete on Twitter – and I really know you quite well, find me at Facebook at www.facebook.com/ismepete – although I would prefer that only people that I do know add me on Facebook.

Finally, on to Buzz.

1) I don’t use GMail, so my exposure to this is what I have read online and seen in my Twitter stream.

2) It has serious privacy concerns at the moment, with all sorts of stories arising about potential abuses of this service.

3) I use 2 social networking sites already regularly, and I don’t think that at the moment I have room for a third. Especially one so intrinsically linked with what I do with my email, which I like have closed off to most people.

4) Is this really going to be any more widely used in the long term than Google Wave? I actually quite like Google Wave, but have so few contacts on there to communicate with, that it’s just an empty place. If the masses were to take up Wave (and maybe that it was Google are ultimately trying to do with Buzz) then it might become more interesting, but that isn’t the case (for me) yet.

I’m sure that in the next year or two, another social media website will come along to either replace or take their place with Facebook and Twitter in my social networking life. However, if it’s out there already, I don’t know about it yet, and if it is going to be Google Buzz, then there are going to have to be some changes first!