Thanks to the unique environment furnished by college campuses, students hoping to start their own businesses have a variety of resources to draw upon.

Social Support

Many traditional entrepreneurs start their business ventures with very little social support or advice to guide them.  Students, on the other hand, are often involved in a variety of social circles and groups.  There are a variety of opportunities to network with other young people who share similar interests and drive.  College is a place where most people are still unencumbered with family and full-time work obligations.  Friends can be excellent sources of support and advice.

Professional Advice

Young entrepreneurs seeking expert advice must only look as far as their university’s faculty directory.  Professors are generally happy to help a student that is enthusiastic about their field of research or interest.  Whatever subject you want to discuss, from marketing strategies to product design, there is almost certainly a college professor who will point you in the right direction.

Finding a mentor

If at all possible, find a mentor.  Possible mentors abound on college campuses. Whether your mentor is the chair of the business school or a successful MBA student, having a mentor provides a wide variety of learning opportunities.

An A for effort

Most colleges offer credit for extra curricular projects that fall within your field of study.  It is not uncommon for business schools to offer undergraduate credit to students who attempt to start their own business. Generally, a professor is assigned to supervise and sign off on the student’s efforts. Many colleges also offer the option of completing a senior honors thesis based upon your extra-curricular work. Even if the business proves to be less-than-successful, you still have something positive to show for it on your academic record.

Social Networking

College can be a great place to network.  The student body of an average state university hails from all corners of the globe. Social networking sites make the task of keeping in touch easier than it has ever been before.   Your roommate from Beijing who shares your love of green technology might be the key to taking your fledgling business multi-national.  At the very least, you’ll make tons of friends.

This is a guest post written by Alexis Bonari. Alexis is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is a passionate blogger on the topic of education and free college scholarships. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

If you are on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Flikr, Youtube, etc and are making money and growing your business, by being social, then you’re the people we are looking for. You don’t have to be Gary Vaynerchuk, John Chow, Joel Comm, or Shoemoney to get interviewed. If you’ve had success with growing your business and company on social media sites and with social networking, then here is your chance to share some tips, tell your story, and get some more exposure and followers!

Come One! Come All! Social Media Consultants, Coaches, Marketers, Affiliates, Personal Branders, Authors, Designers, Developers, Programmers, whoever you are – drop a comment here and we’ll be in touch to set up an interview to be posted here on Dorm Room Biz!

Thursday night I went to a social media presentation in Downtown Orlando that was put on by Doterati. Doterati is an Orlando area based group of social media interested people. You can read more about the organization and see their upcoming events on their website www.doterati.com. They have a tweetup coming up [tonight] night which I am going to try to make it to.

Anyway, the presentation was about utilizing social media and a little bit on the side of social media consulting. One of the slides was titled “Do Epic Shit” and the idea was that you should be making big moves to get your self noticed on Twitter, the blogosphere, Facebook or wherever else.

I liked the idea of “Do Epic Shit” because it does not just apply to your social media and networking presence but to business in general. So I thought I’d make a quick video about it. I recorded this Thursday night after getting back to my hotel.

I’d love to hear your comments about doing epic shit and hustling to get your business out there and noticed!

Twitter is just like any other social networking website out there – you sign up, you start posting (or tweeting in this case), follow what other people are saying, and people follow what you are saying. As you follow people, you start to see what they are saying on your Twitter homepage. Not a bad way to keep in touch with others right? I agree. It is a great way to get a quick thought out or bounce an idea off of someone if you are following each other. However, Twitter has a downside..besides its bad downtime and constant “over capacity” warnings, some people seem to find it neccessary to tweet EVERYTHING they are thinking or doing. For example, Robert Scoble on Twitter. When Twitter was getting popular, I started following him…soon I realized that if I followed him I wouldn’t be able to see what anyone else was doing because he was using the service so much that I only saw his updates. In fact, now that I think about it, maybe Twitter is over capacity because of Scoble accessing it from every means possible: online, desktop widgets, IM clients, text messages, emails, blog plugins, and anything else out there. So needless to say, I stopped following him.

Now, as I cruise the blogosphere, I have started to see different “Follow me on Twitter” images such as I have in the right sidebar. No problem here. Taking it one step further, that person has something along the lines of “You Follow, I Follow” posted underneath that. Meaning that if you follow them, they will follow you. Almost sounds like the pregnancy pact of teen girls who agreeed to get pregnant together and have their babies together.

Anyway, if you start following every person who follows you, you soon will not be able to follow any conversation that might be starting on Twitter, you won’t be able to catch all of the replies or “@” sent your way in a timely manner, and you won’t know what is going on. So, I encourage you to check out Twitter, try out the service, follow me on Twitter, and engage in conversations with people. However, if you follow me, there is not gaurentee that I will follow you – I am just putting this out there. I have been receiving more and more notifications of people following me on Twitter and that is great. I love the opportunity to connect with new people and network however I will not be following you all just because you follow me; that defeats the purpose of the service to me. When I receive an email saying someone is following me, I check their page to see who else they are following, how long they have been apart of Twitter, and what they are tweeting about. If I like what I see, I’ll follow; if not, I’ll check back at it later.

See you on Twitter…if the site stays up long enough.