Blogworld 09 - How to Get Really Huge in the Blogosphere

I've been looking forward to this one. It's being given by Ben Huh, the fellow who runs I Can Has Cheezburger. He wants to help us all become corporate fatcats.

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Here are my notes.

• In order to be huge, you have to be very tightly focused. As things went on, Ben discovered that he was one of the biggest obstacles to growth because he kept trying to scatter their focus and chase interesting things.


• Their mission statement is very simple - we want to make you happy for 5 minutes a day. By making it clear and tight, they know what they're about.


• He highly prioritizes his actions and focuses on what he would do if he could only worked 1 hour a day, 2 hours a day, 4 hours a day and so forth. It's an interesting way to get at your priorities.


• They make their business processes as simple as possible.


• The more complicated you make things, the more you slow down your growth.


• They use WordPress as their online content management system. They don't see it as a blog, but instead as a communications system. They also use Skype for communications. They use cloud services to host their data - they don't want to get involved in hosting problems.


• Put your money where you're going to get a return. They don't have a phone system, they do it all through the Internet.


• All of this simplicity frees you up to spend your time focusing on improving the things that make you unique and successful.

Ben's talk was strongly reminiscent of Peter Drucker's work and most of the other business books I've read. Ben does the important stuff with passion and dedication and focus. This was an awesome talk.