Holiday Interview with BizSugar Member Paul Cheney

(Editor’s Note: Happy Holidays to everyone in the BizSugar small business community. A few months ago small business consultant Paul Cheney wrote a great post about how he launched his small business blog using BizSugar.com. It’s taken us a while to catch up with him, but finally, during this Holiday season, here’s a brief interview with Paul that we hope you’ll savor along with the eggnog and the Holiday brisket about how he did it.)

1. So to start can you tell us a bit about your business?

Sure. Scrappy Pencil Media is basically just a blog about marketing ideas for creative or innovative (I haven’t decided which word to use yet) businesses. I started it because there are a lot of blogs out there that give a lot of general marketing advice. And there’s not a lot of specific down-and-dirty marketing strategies and ideas that people can implement right away. My blog exists to fill that hole.

As far as the business is concerned, I’m planning on launching a membership site off the blog that teaches small local business owners a comprehensive marketing system they can use to build a sustainable business online and off.

2. How and when did you discover BizSugar.com?

I don’t remember exactly how I discovered BizSugar. I do remember I was looking for online communities that were aimed specifically at small businesses. I wanted to start networking and contributing to a community.

Somehow I stumbled across BizSugar and I knew it was going to be a win-win.

3. You say you used BizSugar to literally launch your small business blog. Can you tell us a bit more about that?

Once I found BizSugar, I studied it. I probably spent a whole work day just reading content and figuring out how the site worked. After the homework stage, I simply wrote a blog post that I knew would make a splash. I aimed it directly at the heart of BizSugar’s target audience and waited.

Eventually I had a few hundred visitors to my site, 23 retweets, 27 Bizsugars, 4 great comments, and most importantly 12 subscribers.

You can read more about the whole thing here: How I Used BizSugar to Start my Business with a Bang

4. What other recommendations do you have as far as online marketing with social media for someone hoping to promote their blog?

Besides finding online communities to contribute to, guest posting is my other main strategy for promoting my blog. In fact, I’m doing it right now.

If you’re just starting out, you can use social networking sites like BizSugar to build relationships so that you can do more guest posting. The best guide I’ve found on guest blogging is by Glen Alsopp on Viperchill.com.

5. Any other tips for other contributors on the best way to benefit from the BizSugar community?

Give, give, give. Add value and contribute to the community. Be as helpful as you can and you’ll inevitably benefit from it. What goes around comes around.

6. Anything else you’d like to add?

Yes. Don’t expect to make a huge splash the first time around. If you really look at my numbers, they aren’t all that impressive. The main thing I got from the whole experience was confirmation that the strategy itself worked and that I can build on it.

I also got the opportunity to guest post on BizSugar for even more exposure. Don’t look at the numbers, look at the opportunities and momentum you gain from even a small splash. Once you’ve made that splash, don’t quit. Keep splashing around and eventually you’ll be swimming.

Paul Cheney is the founder of Scrappy Pencil Media. For more marketing ideas and to sign up for Paul’s newsletter go to ScrappyPencil.com.