Wendy Sullivan, freelance writer and blogger, takes a more creative approach to beating boredom by celebrating Topless Wednesday and No Pants Friday. (She takes Working Naked to a whole new level!) Her not-so-G-rated approach to working from home inspired me to find out what other home office pros do to fight home office boredom.

– Music. I max out my free 40 hours of Pandora within the first week of the month.
- Twitter. Lame, but it does make you feel somewhat like you’re talking to people.
- Hula hooping. I have a client who teaches hula hoop classes. It’s so much fun, so from time to time I hula hoop in the middle of the day.

—Sarah Early, dodeline design

-Burn nice scented candles and listen to a variety of music via Pandora.com.
-Putt into a coffee cup when I need to clear my mind.
-Talk to or play with my dog, who is usually sleeping in front of my desk.
-Instant message my husband or a friend just to see how their day is going. It’s kind of my virtual water cooler, if you will. Usually after that break, I can refocus on tasks at hand.

—Bianca B. King, Seven5 Seven3 Marketing Group

-Exercise. I walk five miles every morning, most days of the week. It revs up my brain and sates my “need to roam” fix for the day.
-Have lunch with a group of other home based entrepreneurs. We tend to get together every fourteen days or so and we visit and share stories about how we’re doing in work and life.

—Andra L. Watkins CPA CMC, POSITUS consulting LLC

-Change the time of day I work out. I like to break up my days by sometimes going to a workout class or running just before lunch.
-Change venue. I live next to a Barnes and Noble, so I can take my laptop to the coffee shop for a change of scenery.
-If I have a lot of writing to do but not many calls scheduled, I sometimes head to the library. It’s quiet and I can focus.

—Sandra L. Bienkowski

What do you do to make working from home more interesting?

The HubSpot article “The 9 Worst Ways to Use Twitter for Business,” takes an “avoid doing this” approach to making Twitter more effective.  A few of the top Twitter don’ts include:

1. Only include links to your own blog
Business blogging is a great marketing tactic, and so is sharing your blog posts on Twitter. Find other relevant bloggers in your industry on Twitter and retweet their articles. Another tip is to find interesting and relevant articles on the Web instead of just on Twitter, and share the links with your followers.

2. Follow Anyone and Everyone
If you follow a ton of just anyone, not only will your Twitter stream be filled with irrelevant content you don’t care about, but you’ll look spammy to people who see your skewed follow numbers. It’s not completely fair but if the number of people you follow, far outnumbers your followers, it hurts your credibility.

3. Don’t Interact With Other Twitter Users
Make sure to retweet and reply to at least a few people each day so that you’re making Twitter a two-way conversation.  It’s tough, but make this the first thing you do each morning and it will become a habit.

4. Only Tweet Once Per Week
If you follow some of the advice above, by taking a few minutes each day to retweet interesting tweets and share relevant content, you shouldn’t have a problem here. On the opposite side, don’t tweet so often that you annoy your followers.

My #10 don’t do tip is: Use the term “Twittering” instead of the right term “Tweeting.” It lets someone know right away that you’re new to Twitter or that you have no idea what it is.

Twitter can be invaluable to your business if you know what not to do.

Related posts:
There’s more to Twitter than tweeting your next task

5 ways Twitter makes you a better person

If you work alone or from home, there’s no denying that Twitter is an invaluable tool, both professionally and personally. As part of a marketing strategy, Twitter can help spread the word about your business. And when you’re feeling disconnected, Twitter can make you feel a part of the world around you.

But in some circles, Twitter, Facebook and social media, in general, is considered a bad thing. “We’re all getting self-obsessed,” some complain. To them I say, Twitter can actually make you a better person.

Here’s some ‘Twitterquette’ to demonstrate how:

1. Be more open
   Contrary to popular belief, Twitter’s not all about what you had for lunch. But its 140-character limit and the ways in which you can tweet – from your desk or from your mobile phone – make Twitter an ideal platform to share a little more about yourself. Being transparent with your followers reminds you of who you want to be and what you want to stand for. That openness is good for your business and for your relationships with your friends and your family.
2. Share and share alike
   Twitter makes it easy to share links, music and video clips with your followers. Like newspaper cuttings in the post (“I saw this and thought of you”), you can send your findings to individuals directly, or share your knowledge, tips and advice with the world. How can you be more sharing outside of Twitter?
3. Take an interest in others
   Twitter expert Mark Shaw says that before you start your day on Twitter, reply to three tweets and retweet another. It helps feed the Twittersphere. Imagine if everyone talked about themselves and took no interest in others? Following this etiquette reminds us to take an interest in others, online and off.
4. Help spread the word
   By retweeting an update, you share someone else’s ideas, concerns and good news with your followers. If someone needs help and you don’t know the answer, maybe someone in your network does? How can you ‘retweet’ and help friends and contacts in real life?
5. Ask questions
   If you’ve a following on Twitter, one of the best ways to keep your followers engaged is to ask questions. Ever been to a dinner party and sat next to someone who just talked about themselves? Ask a few questions and you’ll get more out of Twitter – and more out of life!

What do you think? Does following Twitter etiquette make you a better person? Or is Twitter, Facebook and social media making us more self-obsessed and less in touch with the real world? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

San Sharma is community manager at Enterprise Nation, as well as the voice of @e_nation on Twitter.

They don’t get it. Others don’t either, unless they use Twitter often.

Twitter isn’t just about letting others know what you’re doing through your tweets. The truth is that unless you’re a major celebrity, not everyone cares where you’re going or where you’ve been.

There are a few ways that you can use Twitter to help you grow your business including:

Drawing traffic to your blog. When you update your blog (which you should do several times a week), tweet your latest blog headline and a (shortened) link. The better the headline, the faster your followers will flock to your site.

Sharing articles that may interest your followers. Tweet about articles, blog posts or even photos that will help your followers. I scan about 150 articles a day to find the right ones to share with my followers. If my followers like my tweets, they’ll retweet them, which introduces me to their followers.

Establishing you as the go-to expert. When a writer, reporter or producer is looking for an expert, they may use TweetDeck, HootSuite,  Seesmic, or Twitter Search to find the right person to interview. The same goes for prospective clients looking for a product or service. Twitter is a viable search engine for up-to-the-minute events. While the tweets you find may not be from major news outlets, the links they provide may come from sources you recognize.  This Open Forum article, “Search Marketing, Twitter-Style” gives a good description of how well Twitter works as a search engine.

Growing your online presence. If you’re serious about growing your business, you have to have a Web presence.  Do an Internet search of your name and your company name and if you don’t find yourself, you need to ramp up your online efforts.  Twitter is a good way to do that.

Making new business contacts. I’ve been fortunate to meet some incredible business owners through Twitter including @daveyank, @RightGirl (she’s hilarious) and @TachelleDaniels. We’ve worked on projects together, provided guest posts or interviews for one another’s sites, and found ways to help each other out.

Twitter can help you grow your business if you take advantage of all it has to offer. As for letting others know that you’re on your way to buy frozen yogurt, you may want to open a personal account for that.

1. Don’t let anyone tell you what to do. At its core, Stewart said, social marketing is about finding your own voice and communicating your brand’s personality. It’s easy to do what everyone else is doing and hope for a good response.  Mix it up, break the rules and be willing to let others see the real you.
2. Find yourself a good co-pilot. Throughout her keynote, Martha Stewart tossed questions and remind-me-later asides at Eliad Laskin, her all-purpose technical guru. At some point you’ll realize that you can’t do everything and actually, you shouldn’t.  Find someone who has strengths in areas you don’t.
3. Go where your customers are — and remember that everyone’s a customer. Instead of picking one platform, Stewart advises finding ways to adjust your pitch to reach the different communities that form online. My Twitter and LinkedIn accounts are all business while my Facebook account combines aspects of both my business and personal life.

In her Small Business Trends post, “20 Reasons People Unfollow You On Twitter,” Barone shares the results of a quick poll she did with Twitter users.  All of the tips are insightful and worth reading, especially these four.

1. You’re a self-promoter: Lots of people mentioned that they were turned off by Twitter users who do nothing but promote their own content. You want to drive traffic to your site, but there’s other content out there.

2. You’re too self-centered. Twitter is about connecting with others and not making it about you.

3. You auto-DM: Nothing hurts more than choosing to follow someone you think is cool…and then being hit with the dread auto spam DM. There will always be something annoying and creepy about getting a sales pitch via DM. Build a relationship before you try to sell something to someone.

4. You don’t share anything new. There’s nothing wrong with retweeting unless that’s all you do. Share new information when you can.

Think before you tweet: Before you tweet that link, publish that twitter comment or get into that heated debate, ask yourself if what you’re about to put out there is meaningful. You know that queasy feeling you get in your stomach when you say something you wish you could take back? Bad tweets can give you the same feeling but you can’t ever take those words back.

Own your account: If you’re tweeting on behalf of a company, make sure you disclose that both in your tweets and in your profile. If you try to hide it, it will be found out. Bottom line: nobody likes a sneaky tweeter.

Learn to tease: Much of good Twittering is tied to the ability to write great engaging headlines and get people wanting more. With a name like Working Naked I can get away with double meanings. Of course that disappoints the teenagers who visit this site looking for pics of chicks working naked.

Leave room for retweets: There is nothing that validates you as a good tweet writer more than being retweeted by your followers; however, if you make your tweets too long you actually lower the chances of people retweeting you. Great tip that I never considered. Using Tinyurl.com helps but you can shorten a tweet only so much.

The article “6 ways to get people to believe you online” can help you become a bit more trustworthy.  A few of these tips may bring out the Boy Scout in you.

Talk like a real person. Nothing gives the impression that you’re faceless more than using completely neutral third person language across your site. This is something I had to learn early on, after spending years writing hundreds of third person articles for magazines. Sometimes it can be all about you.

Respond directly. This could mean using a tool like Twitter to respond directly to customer feedback, or simply posting comments on blog posts that mention your business or the category your business is in. A little attention can go a long way.

Use multimedia. If you can find a way to include more images of your retail location, or a photo gallery of your employees working together, or video of your products – each of these can go a long way to sharing the inside story behind your business and establishing a basis for trust. OK, already. It’s time to get started on videos.  (That’s a reminder to myself.)

Encourage advocates. Sometimes the best way to build trust in your business is to have lots of people online saying good things about you. The old saying, “It doesn’t matter what people say about you so long as they spell your name right,” doesn’t cut it anymore.  Someone spreading lies about you isn’t OK, even if they spell your name correctly.

I don’t read Twitter direct messages anymore (unless they’re from someone I know). Why? Because I’m not interested in “enhancing” anything, I don’t want a loan and if I needed to find a business coach, I wouldn’t use one who solicited me on Twitter.

Maybe I’m missing something.  Shouldn’t a direct message be used for sending a message that has value instead of using it to send a cheesy sales message?  While I appreciate the “thank you for following me” direct messages, I don’t want anyone to sell me anything.  Just thank me and move on.  As soon as I start following you, I’ll have a clear idea of what you can do for me and whether or not I need your services.

When the need to thank and sell at the same time goes away and people use direct messages to send a non-sales message, I’ll start reading them again.  Until then, I’ll stick to e-mail, Facebook and the contact form on this site.

People (and potential clients) want to hear from you…they really do.  Just wait to sell them something until after your first direct message exchange.

• Establishing expertise. The writer, Lisa Barone, makes a good argument for establishing yourself as the “go-to” person in your field. She recommends participating in groups and answering questions through the Q&A.

• Share content. Barone suggests you do it in a way that’s not self-promoting or appears to be selling to someone else. She emphasizes that people on LinkedIn are looking for content and not just passing by.