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Twitter can be used for various purposes, in various ways, so these are subjective "turnoffs". Before reading further, please know that I don't want to criticize anyone's tweeting style. If it works for you & your goals, power to you!
I'm talking from the point of view of a person who wants to promote useful things on Twitter, get interesting updates from others in her timeline, have followers and followees with whom she can interact, and grow surely but steadily. You know, the way Twitter was supposed to work :).
So here are my 7 Twitter turnoffs:
#1 Only promote content from their own blog/website
This has to be the biggest turnoff because it shows that the person is not interested in what others have to say and confuse Twitter with an RSS feed.
#2 No interaction with others
I quickly scroll down to see what tweets go out from that account. If I don't see any interaction with anybody, it's a red flag because it shows you probably never read what people you follow are saying, and, I might be old-fashioned in this, but I believe Twitter is also a tool for interaction.
#3 Number of people they follow is in the 5 digits range or close to zero
I admire your enthusiasm, but even when you're only following hundreds of people it's sometimes hard to keep track of who's tweeting what. I don't even want to imagine how fast the Twitter wheel spins when you're following over 10,000 accounts. How are you ever going to see my tweets and give us a chance to interact?
Another red flag is when the number under 'following' is close to zero, but this doesn't happen very often. Some celebrities get away with this. As do some famous people with turnoff #1.
Some people can only promote their own links and can follow no one, and they still get a big following just because they're so famous and/or interesting that we eat up whatever they say. But this is an exception to the rule.
#4 Latest updates are a total bore or low quality
No one is going to go through your whole Twitter history. The first and only thing anyone sees is the latest tweets. If those aren't interesting and appealing enough, if they don't show that you're offering quality information and/or interacting with others, what will?
#5 Unappealing profile description
This is very subjective to everyone. For example, I only want to follow people with whom I share the same interests, or who I find interesting in one way or another. If your profile description says you are an accountant and tweet about gaming, there's no sense for me to follow you because I'm not interested in either of those things (which obviously doesn't mean that they're not interesting for others).
Make sure your profile description fits who you are and what you're interested in. It will help you get followers with whom you can have a genuine Twitter-ship. :)
#6 Repeating the same updates over and over again
I get it. You also have a Facebook page and you love it and you want to have millions of followers there too. But, please, don't tell me about it ten times a day. Unless I'm your business partner, I don't care about it too much. And if I'm the type of person who you want to click on your page and like it, and be interested in it and so on, I will get the point the first, second or third time you tell me about it.
If you need to repeat something, maybe for the new followers, maybe to remind people of a great piece of content, do it every few days or every couple of weeks. People forget (thank god), but give us a chance to!
#7 Too many or too few tweets
If your last tweet was five months ago and your next one will be in 2014, you don't need a Twitter account. If you send 300 tweets per day, every day, you're probably a machine.
Again, you might disagree with me on some of these because Twitter is, in the end, a tool, and we each choose to use it in our own way.
So, what are YOUR Twitter 'red flags'?
