If you are looking to save time in graduate school you had better get organized. i have found online tools to be amazing to get me organized. Offline organization is important as well. We will save that for another day and time. Online organization can be accomplished with some really cool tools.

Remember The Milk
Google Documents
Google Alerts
Mint.com

I utilized Remember the Milk to keep organized on a day to day basis making to do lists to accomplish goals and what not.

Google Documents allows me to keep data organized that I need for class, and other personal projects. I can share them and collaborate as well.

Google Alerts keeps me updated on news that I normally wouldn´t take the time to search for.

Mint.com helps me organized my finances in a way that is responsible and effective.

I hate dealing with financial junk. I personally have the worst of luck with banks and organizing my financial data. I came across an amazing financial planning website that rocks my financially unorganized world. It is called Mint.

Mint is fresh, intelligent online money management. Not only is Mint free, it saves you money. While existing personal finance software packages require hours to set up, a passion for accounting (is that possible?) and hours of weekly maintenance, Mint is virtually effortless.

With Mint, you can achieve better online financial management in less than five minutes. After that, revolutionary, patent–pending Mint money management software does the rest, with virtually no more work required. It automatically pulls together your bank, credit union and credit card data, and provides up–to–date and amazingly accurate views of your financial—life from the big picture to specific details, in a friendly and intuitive way.

Mint seems to be simple and secure and will make organizing all my finances that much easier and more cozy. Being able to jump in and really see what you are facing is sure helpful.

I was utilizing FriendFeed today and I came across this great article on creating a Resume 2.0.

I love this entire article. But I want to focus on something that I am ridiculously passionate about. Creating professional profiles on LinkedIn,Facebook,WordPress.com, and Twitter so that a potential human resource manage can not only see you are connected with other folks in your field, but you are passionate about it because you create content on WordPress.com about your field of interest, and you network with folks on Facebook and Twitter.

I think this will help make up for a lack of experience and show insight into going the extra mile to achieve success with a new company.

One of the things you are going t want to learn about in building your business part time is Search Engine Optimization. i get asked about this all the time. It is one of my biggest passions so lets head in and talk a bit.

Search Engine Optimization is the art and science of developing content that is recognized by search engines as being quality content that should be shown to a majority of search users.

So let’s talk about what it takes to create search engine optimized content. First off. Ignore all the geeky web sites that are discussing metatags, htaccess, and various tricks of the industry in the long run they aren’t going to help you much.

Here is a great article series that will get you going in the right direction:
Seo Copywriting by Brian Clark

Copywriting is something that is largely all about creating highly valuable content that jumps out to the readers. Focusing on creating readable easily attractable content will bring both readers and search engine traffic. ultimately you want to be able to convert that traffic from Search Engines into Daily Readers.

When it comes to SEO I believe its about keeping it simple. Create great linkable content that readers will love and watch the traffic flow. It’s that simple.

In our current series on building a business and going to grad school I mentioned Social Networking. I have found that social networking is very important to building an online business.

Below are my four favorite social networking hubs
LinkedIn.com
LinkedIn is a great social networking platform that really focuses on your business contacts. Using LinkedIn to find people you know and develop a new network of connections.

Facebook.com
Facebook is great for connecting with College Classmates, but i find it even more powerful for finding new business profiles. Just be careful what you post on here if you are using it for business purposes.

Performancing Hive
Performancing’s Hive is a great community for entrepreneurs and especially social media marketers. This is great for promoting high quality content that you wish to get scene by lots of folks. It is also a great place to find new friends in the blogging world.

FriendFeed Rooms
FriendFeed Rooms is a part of FriendFeed which in and of itself is a social aggregator of friends and followers. Finding rooms related to topics you are interested in or are in business in is essential. I have found mixed success going with this approach. But head in and give it a try it can’t hurt.

You might be thinking this part time business is not that important but is a great path to paying the bills and getting ahead on your student loans. Its also about buildng an online profile that you can apply in a future career path as well.

I personally recommend Reddit.com as my favorite social media hub. Social Media is a new way, well relatively new. I would say it has really grown up in the last 3 years with the growth of Social Media sites like Techmeme, Reddit,and Digg.

While you may or may not have huge success building a business and going to school it is a great learning experience and something you will be able to put on a resume. Social Media Skills are going to be something employers will be craving for in the years to come and grasping this niche will be huge in a declining economy where people are constantly looking to curb advertising and develop inhouse marketing tactics.

So If I were you i would keep this in mind as you build your online profile and business as well.

I tend to stay away from politics on this website. But I couldn´t help but read this article on The Huffington Post regarding foreign policy and education.

This article seems to poke a bit at Sarah Palin´s experience and it is something to think about. 1 Year Intensive Degree programs are common, but real foreign policy leadership would be better learned not in a classroom but in the field.

I love the idea of Intensive Grad School Programs. But I also love the idea of not only adding to them by developing real world skills. Let´s talk about local fundraising projects for amazing groups like Kiva, a startup whose mission is microfinancing for small startups in 3rd World Countries.

Other options would be to actually head out into the field and do a few years with the Peace Corps.   I am sure there are many better alternatives or auxilliary paths to foreign policy experience. My personal concept has been to spend time in areas in which you are passionate. If you are passionate about energy and renewable energy spend a year working with a non profit in Africa helping developing renewable energy for small villages in dire need of affordable energy.

With a troubled economy lets look upward towards ways we can improve the world and not trample it again for the next hundred years with failed economic and energy policies that bankrupt us as well as the rest of the globe.  

Continuing in our excursion into building a business while going to Grad School. Twitter is one of the networking and marketing tools that is essential. I use twitter daily to update folks on recent articles, thoughts, and other insights within my industry.

Twitter allows you to publis 140 character messages online or on your phone and interact likewise with people of common interests. Known as followers. Twitter is a great marketing tool, but its a better tool for conversations and networking.

Great tools to find people you may want to follow:
Twitter Search,twitters search engine is amazing and allows you find topics and people in which to follow.

Twubble, is a great tool to help you find cool people you may want to follow.

The thing I have noticed about Twitter is its all about consistency. You will find you have more interaction with followers if you tweet on a regular basis and dont just throw them Twitter Links to your blog posts.

Bonus Tip: TwitterFeed allows you to share your blog posts directly with your followers. Which saves you time in marketing.

Building a part time business during grad school is a great idea. But how do you do it? I am a huge believer in blogging. WordPress, and WordPress.com in general is a great platform in which to build a blog. And blogging is a great platform in which to build a small business.

Setting up a WordPress.com account is easy. There are numerous great designs from which to choose as well.

I am a firm believer if you are going to setup a blog utilize your Brand Name as your Blog URL. So let´s say for example you are starting a small business selling art, and you are the artist. So use your name. If your name is Jeff Myers. Use jeffmyers.wordpress.com as your blog url. Then I would utilize Jeff Myers The Artist as the blogs title.

Once you get a blog setup, you will have to create some great content right off the bat. This is what is called Flagship content. To sum it up you need some great content right off the bat. Again going back to the theory you are an artist. I would create some articles that would appeal to other artists, as well as consumers.

Here are some example Titles, and Topics:
10 Great Online Artist Resources
7 Great Websites To Sell Your Art
5 Amazing Artists You´ve Never Heard Of

Creating great content is hard work but it does pay off. Setting up a blog is the first step down the path to starting a great online business in my opinion. Doing it in grad school is a time killer but thats´ why I recommend simple free tools to get the job done. So it doesnt kill your already drained bank account.

Anyone looking to build a part time business whether it be online or offline needs to have a web based presence as well. There are a variety of services I would recommend setting up to really get a nice online profile.

Blogging Profiles:
WordPress.com

Everyone one the planet has a story, every business has a story as well. Getting started with a blog is easy. Developing a blog audience is sometimes difficult. We will touch on that in a later post. First off get a blog setup on WordPress.com its a great place to host and better yet its free.

Microblogging Profiles:
Twitter.com

Microblogging allows you to reach a different audience. Albeit it may overlap. Later we will touch on more specifics of how to best utilize Twitter. In the meantime get an account setup,set your homepage in your profile to your WordPress.com blog. Share brief details of what your up to in your business venture.

Social Media:
Mixx.com
Reddit.com
Friendfeed.com

I wont even try to explain to you the details of Social Media. However it is a NECCESITY to setup strong Social Media Profiles. I personally avoid Digg like the plague. DoshDosh has a great indepth series on Social Media you should check out.

Online Business Networking:
LinkedIn.com
Facebook.com
Performancing Hive
FriendFeed Rooms

Business networking is essential in any field. But especially online. I have found that using LinkedIn to find new connections in conjunction with Facebook is great for finding people in my field of interest.

Performancing Hive is great for online marketers. It´s not free. But it brings great value to learning and networking with like minded folks.

FriendFeed Rooms is a great place to network with like minded folks and these are folks who can help bring a name to your brand.

Search Engine Profile
If you are building anykind of website, if just a blog even you definetly need to understand the basics of Search Engine Optimization. You don´t need to be an expert but having a basic understanding really helps. We will touch more on Search Engine Optimization however in the meantime we would strongly recommend you read SEOBook.com to get a better understanding of the field.

That´s the basic gist. We will touch more on each specific topic in future posts.