Twitter profiles and the three second rule

What do you think makes a good Twitter profile? What makes you want to follow back? And what has you reaching for the bucket?

Most mornings, sometime between about 10am - 11am, I'll start clicking through to see who my new Twitter followers are. I guess I'm aiming to give each profile a three second glance - then if it looks of interest, I may click through to the website, follow, put them in a list, send them a welcome tweet, even forward their details to other people who make want to follow them too - which all takes a lot longer. But essentially, a Twitter profile has that three second window to capture my interest. I'm not being snobbish, or overly discerning - I'm just busy, and I don't get enough time to read the many interesting people I follow at the moment.

I tweet for work (this is very important) and I'm British. (So is this. There are appear to be enormous cultural differences on Twitter). So ... for me, here are some profile no-no's:

• Purely personal Twitter profiles are out. I need to know what company and, hopefully, website and blog you are associated with.
• Obviously stock-shot photographic backgrounds
• Great big customised extra information splashed about ME! ME! ME! and MY BUSINESS WHICH COULD MAKE YOU MONEY ON THE INTERNET!
• I need a decent picture - not soft porn, preferably not a cheeeeeeesy studio portrait. If it's a bit quirky, that's good.
• If you call yourself a guru or a social media expert, I'm gone. I don't much like entrepreneur either. And if you describe yourself as making your money from social media I suspect you barely scrape a living and probably upset a lot of people in the process. Harsh, but true.
• If you are a company logo, please tell me who is doing the tweeting - if several people do, please initial your tweets. I can't form a relationship with a logo.
• Don't boast. And some self-depreciative humour goes down well with this cynical Brit.
• Mentioning your family at the end of your business description is fine. In fact it's good. I'm less keen to know your golf handicap, but that's just me.

And of course, I'll look at some recent tweets to see what kind of interest/education/amusement you can offer. These will turn me off immediately:

• Pithy sayings by the famous
• Pithy saying by the unknown
• Song Lyrics
• Everything In Initial Caps And Worse If It's Not Even The Title Of An Article.
• Spam. Spam. Spam. Spam.
• All conversations between friends which I don't understand and am not interested in. And conversely, no conversation. The best Tweeters have a mixture of conversational starters, passing on information and gnomic responses to 'friends'.
• Dodgy punctuation!!!!!! Andpeeple who cant spelll 2

I'm really conscious that I'm standing in a great big glass house now (or should that be birdcage?), and you can come and throw great big stones at my profile if you like: I expect I deserve it. Even worse, I really wanted to post up some choice profiles to illustrate my points (oh, I have some beauties). But that would be mean and nasty to actual people, so I've had to restrain myself.  It would be great to hear what turns you off Tweeters though - and maybe you'll feel more able to share some of the goodies in your intray?

Image: Duane Hoffmann / msnbc.com