Social media is the concept of the moment: companies have training in it, and it is fast becoming the golden goose for advertisers, writes Catherine Fraser. Here she talks to Scott Gould, a co-founder of the international Like Minds conference on the subject being held in Exeter later this month.

THE most important purpose behind social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook is simply to connect people, believes Scott Gould, one of the co-founders of Like Minds.

"I have a four-month-old daughter," Scott says. "And you know what, the amazing thing is you have got all these agency heads and so on who I work with – really important people – before anything else asking me how my daughter is, and I think it shows that social media has made people more personable again.

"I think that's one of the major things that I like about it. I'm not really sure that it's a marketing tool or a customer service thing, I'm just more interested in how it makes people connect with each other.

"We are focused on building relationships. We have got an international team based all over the world and we work together to try and foster relationships through this new medium. We don't advertise or do any marketing."

For the past couple of years, the Like Minds conference, which is held in venues across the city, has brought together people from all areas of the digital revolution – and from all over the world – for talks, workshops and networking. For Scott, born and bred in St Thomas, having such an important conference in Exeter is vital.

"We get questions about Exeter all the time," he laughs. "In the conferencing industry you go where the people are and considering that we are in the media and communications industry, everything around that mainly happens in London. But we have always maintained that getting away from the big smoke and coming into a beautiful city like Exeter, which is fantastic to be in, is refreshing for the soul and helps people detach from the rigmarole of everyday life.

"When the event happens, we have over half a million people engaging with the event on Twitter and Facebook and all those people now know about Exeter. We've got people all over the world who know about our city, perhaps more than any other UK city, because of Like Minds, and we love the fact that we are able to boost the local economy and boost the profile of Exeter businesses. It's one of those things you can be proud of," he says.

Like Minds has worked closely with John Harvey, the city centre manager, and Scott says the conference has generated around £200,000 of revenue for the city, which is unusual for a conference of such a relatively modest size.

"We have also been able to help local businesses get work with massive businesses – most notably a company that is a sponsor of ours now work directly with the board of Orange and we're really proud of that and it makes us just glad that we did stick to our roots."

And yet all this started through a chance meeting on Twitter between Scott and Trey Pennington, an American who was one of the world's best-known social media enthusiasts.

"Trey and I were chatting online on Twitter and he said he was coming over to the UK and did I want to meet up?" Scott recalls. "I did not think it would actually happen but he came down to Exeter and he suggested I set up an event to talk about this new technology. We set a date for it and I hooked up with my co-founder Andrew Ellis, an Exeter-based entrepreneur who I also met through Twitter.

"The first event just went better than anybody expected and I remember on the day somebody tweeted saying Rome wasn't built in a day, but the Like Minds community was. It was literally a meeting of like-minded people and I just facilitated it, but since then we have grown one event on top of another.

"Our profile has increasingly attracted more influential speakers and we have had the opportunity to do things abroad and consult countries on using this technology, and we are branching out now beyond just talking about social media."

AND yet Scott does not spend all his time at the computer. He is a committed Christian and also works as a pastor at the River Church, where he helped out doing graphic design after leaving school.

"I have a lot of pastoral duties at the church and I also do a lot of the church's media – we actually use online media and now we have more people who watch our services online from around the world than people who are in the building. At school I was rubbish at computers, but somewhere along the line I got good at it," he laughs.

He learned how to build a community through the church, setting up a youth charity event, Feedback, which attracted thousands of people a month.

"To cut a long story short I got into consulting after that, but it didn't really go very well and I started Like Minds as a way of trying to get business. It just went better than I ever expected it to and we are now at a point where we've got co-working clubs in London and New York running 24/7. I'm just a guy from Exeter and it's very humbling considering the sort of people I get to meet and work with," he says.

He believes that the relationships local people and businesses have built through Twitter, particularly over the past couple of years, have helped many survive the recession.

"You are more likely to support these people in the city, yes," he says.

""It's quite magical really when you sit down at a networking event and you see people who you know simply from their picture on the internet. It's always a great moment when that recognition happens."

And yet despite Scott's success, and his happy marriage to Faye and the birth of their daughter, he admits that even he has got it wrong, something that was brought home forcefully to him last month when Trey Pennington committed suicide.

His friend's death did not however, he says, come as a shock. "He had a failed suicide attempt in June. I spoke to him on the phone and called him a lot in the weeks before he died and had an email in my inbox from him the day before he took his own life, acting as if everything was OK," he says quietly.

"It was horrible. There is a dark side to social media, to be frank.

The negative side is if you don't focus on personal relationships your only choice is to act like you are.

"So there people who are acting like they are the business right now, the expert, but behind the scenes they are desperate.

"I know people who are authors and have got hundreds of thousands of followers who don't make any money, yet they are acting like they are.

"When people keep those types of things secret and feel they have to do that..." Scott's voice tails off.

"I had been speaking to Trey a lot and we were very close – we chatted through everything – but he couldn't quite say that final thing: that he was thinking of suicide again.

"I'm not someone who complains, but I am now just being a bit more realistic perhaps.

"When people act like they have got it all together no one thinks of sending them business. It's a dangerous double-edged sword that people often fall on.

"But on the other side, I think social media is just an incredible testament to the way that you meet people and the way that you work every day has just radically changed."

For more information on the Like Minds conference, see www.wearelikeminds.com