Tweeters fall into two camps:

1. Those who follow everyone who follows them.
2. Those who don’t.

I am in Camp #2. Once a week, I manually vet each new follower. I visit their profile and scan the first page of updates before deciding whether to follow them.

This week I collected 41 new followers, but I followed only seven of them in return. Here’s why:

1.  No profile

When I’m deciding whether to follow you, the first thing I check out is your profile. If you’re too lazy to write 160 characters about yourself, why should I waste my time following you?

2.  No avatar

The little tweety bird is a poor excuse for an avatar. I don’t care whether you use your company logo or a fuzzy picture of yourself. It’s not that hard to upload an image. Just do it!

3.  Racy avatars

What’s with all the lingerie-clad woman who claim to be business executives? Exactly what business are they in?

4.  Paranoid tweeters

Why protect your tweets when you’re in the world’s largest chat room? I don’t get that. Occasionally, I’ll follow real-life friends who publish private tweets. But only if I really, really like them.

5.  Zeroes

Lots of people “squat” on a Twitter name and never, ever post a single tweet.

6.  Prom queens and kings

These folks follow 10,000 others, have 10,000 followers, and one tweet. Twitter is not a popularity contest.

7.  Automatons

Before I click “follow,” I skim your Twitter stream. If I see the identical automated tweet 20 times in a row, I click away. I have no problem with automated tweets or with repeated tweets, because different followers read your tweets at different times of the day. But 20 repeats? That’s overkill.

8.  Get-rich-quickers

There must be a ton of people in Twitterville who fall for money-making schemes, because the get-rich-quickers appear to be taking over Twitter. Especially the ones who plaster dollar bills all over their profile background.

9.  I’m just not into you

Lots of people who follow me tweet on topics about which I have absolutely no interest. It’s not that I don’t like you; your topic just isn’t relevant to me.

10.  Drinkers

Some people constantly tweet about drinking, meeting for drinks, or getting drunk. Your drunken revelry doesn’t impress grownups.

11.  Repliers

Some people spend all their time replying to others. Their replies consist of inane statements such as, “Me, too!” It especially irks me when repliers don’t provide context for the tweets they’re replying to.

12.  Re-tweeters

These people can’t think of anything original to say, so they re-tweet everybody else’s tweets. Re-tweeting is fine, but we want to hear from you, too (unless you fall into one of the above 11 categories).

Several of my Twitter followers chimed in with their own gripes:

@ChristieJarvis

Pics or posts sexual in nature, “ads”, same tweet many times like on auto send…I prefer more “personal” tweets where people are relating.

@yarnnation

If u only follow people but don’t tweet, if u mostly tweet commercials, if you are too political or extreme in any way.

@valdriessen

• Following way more people than have followers, i.e. 1,000+ people with only 100 followers… (My take, the person is just looking to build followers.. Not interact. I prefer quality over quantity)
• Just tweet about personal information… I don’t mind if they humanize themselves with an occasional tweet about their personal life, but I really don’t want to know when someone goes to the bathroom.
• All about ME… No RTs or dialogue with others
• Get rich quick schemes, i.e. “Find out how I make $1,000 a day on the internet”
• All quotes – quotes in moderation are nice, but all quotes just says you have nothing to say yourself
• Foul language in every tweet
• Any female with a tweet that says “Come check out the pictures of me” (Porn)

How ‘bout you? Do you put limits on the tweeps you’ll follow?

When you comment, please include your Twitter handle. Hope you’ll follow me @bloggingbistro.

*Feel free to reprint this post on your own blog. I’ll be happy to e-mail you the HTML, so all you have to do is copy & paste, and the formatting will remain intact. If you reprint it, please include the following byline:

Laura Christianson, aka The Blogging Barista, owns Blogging Bistro (www.BloggingBistro.com), a Seattle-based social media marketing company.