Your ring tone selection can tell people more about you than you’d like to share. Depending on your surroundings, the ring tone you choose can affect people’s opinions of you. This is why, aside from liking the tone, it’s important to choose one carefully.

Many phones now allow you to set different ‘profiles’ depending on your surroundings. If, for example, you were in a business meeting you could set your profile to use quiet simple tones. When you go out that night with friends, you could set it to play a little louder with something a little more personalised.

Your friends and family may not mind a quick guitar riff when you get a call, your boss and co-workers might. Your personalized tone selection is important in your personal life and doubly so in your professional life.

Here is a quick checklist for what to look for when choosing your personalized ring tone:

1) Something original and creative is good. Show the kind of person you are. Avoid overplayed blaring music tracks.

2) Keep it short and simple. Nobody is going to want to sit listening to a minute long tone every time you receive an SMS.

3) Loud, obnoxious, offensive and poor quality tones should be avoided in any situation.

4) ‘Crazy Frog’ type tones are never good. Never. The default tones on the phone also lack a lack of imagination.

You want to show and promote your personality and character through a ring tone; you don’t want to show a lack of creativity and bad judgement.

If you want a musical tone, try and stick with something simple. If you really must have your favourite song, then keep it good quality, not too loud and take an excerpt of your favourite section. Use audio editing software for the computer, which is freely available; do not record it from your phones mic.

If you want a comedy tone, try to avoid obscure references. You can find joke tons pretty easily or use a piece from a stand up show. Keep it simple, keep it short and make sure the quality is good enough to make out. It could be the funniest joke imaginable, but if you can’t make it out it will sound awful.

While I promote having a good sounding personalised ring tone, I’m not saying be something you’re not. Technology lets us customize our phones for a reason. Try to show something unique to yourself while still maintaining the balance of etiquette decency.