 Emily Lemma, she's a freshman in high school that plays around with word press. Everything that she knows she's willing to teach to her dad, Chris Lemma. Emily Lemma. That's not what I put down. Many people like to think of listicles as useless and click-baity. Ten recipes for your crock-pot. Five tips for your Instagram feed that are guaranteed to get you another hundred followers. Worse yet, the 15 exercises for a flat stomach. We've all seen it. Maybe you've clicked on it. Well I'm gonna give you a better listicle. That's the top ten movies of all time. It's right here on my phone. That would be number one, Inception. That's Leonardo DiCaprio, where he goes into your brain through your dreams and gives you ideas. It's a really great movie if you haven't seen it. Limitless. Memento. The one where he can't remember anything and he just keeps going back in time. It's really hard to follow. But still a great movie. Divergent. Maze Runner. Both of those are books. The Matrix. Definitely a classic. Star Wars. I could put all of those on this list. But I'm gonna say the best one is A New Hope. It's the one that I saw first. If you have a problem with which one I saw first, you can talk to my dad. Titanic. If you're looking for a good cry, that's a great movie to cry a lot. Tomorrowland by Disney. It's a really interesting one. And then Harry Potter 7, part two. Another great one for cries. Maybe you have a different list. But I don't want your list. I want you to write your list, which brings us to 13 blogging tips from a 13-year-old. Let's get right into it. Tip number one. Take your own photos. Maybe they're gonna put that on. I don't know. Your own photos. The first part of this is photos. It's good to have those in your posts so you don't have just a long block of texts. That's not super exciting. Spice up your site a little bit and put some photos in there. But not only that, take your own photos. Why? Well, this is from my site www.mooielema.com. You see how I just put that right in there. Go check that out. And this right here is my very own photo. Is it the best taken photo in the world? Absolutely not. But it's mine. I took that. It's of my work and that's important because two things. The first is that you are building a connection with your audience. This is my very own project. You get to see it and you're seeing a part of me. Now maybe you're not talking about a project, but you can take a picture about what was in your mind's eye when you were thinking about a concept. Your audience sees that and they see you. And that's a connection that you're really striving for when you blog. The other thing is when you get photos from stock images, your site starts to look like every other site out there. I'm going to tell you a little story. My family and I were looking for a handyman and we went through a whole bunch of sites and we started seeing the same three images over and over and over again. You know what? Pretty sure that's not your employee that works for all of your sites. Yeah, no. Those were all stock images. But when we found one that showed you their employees and their projects that they had worked on, that was the one. That's the one we chose. Hands down. Take your own photos. That's the first tip. The second is use headings. We already talked about long blocks of text. Nobody likes them. This is what determines if a reader stays on your post or not. Because there's two things to know about this world and whether you like it or not. Nobody likes long blocks of text. Everybody skims. So get the big points out there in your headings. And between that put a couple paragraphs, not too much, but use a lot of headings. Because if they're going to skim, you want your message out there. They're still going to read it. Does it matter if they read every single word that you posted? Some people will and that's great. But some people won't. And you still want your message out there for them to read it. You're going to need headings. Really important. That was a fast one. Number tip. Number tip. Wow. Number two. Use headings. I'm pretty sure tip isn't a number. I should check out my math teacher. Number three. Have an opinion. I'm in high school. I read textbooks. I read a lot of books. Facts. Really boring. But if you have an opinion on those facts, that's where it gets really interesting. I'd like to hear that. What's your take? This is a post that I wrote about a song. And what the song I think means. The life lessons that you should take away from a three minute song. How much can you get out of a three minute song? Some people will say basically nothing. But my opinion is that you can get several life lessons out of it. I go line by line. And I take the facts and then I blow them up and I talk about my opinions on each fact. That's interesting. That's important. That's what your audience wants to hear. So give them that. Have an opinion. Because facts aren't interesting and they're not helpful. Your opinion is. Number four. Put your picture somewhere on the site. My picture right there, I had bangs. Should probably update that. Maybe that was a mistake. I don't know. But my picture is on the site and it's on the sidebar. So you can see it when you're at the homepage and also while you're viewing a post. This is another one about connection. You're going to get through this whole talk and I'm going to say connection a lot. Connection is the word of the day. A connection with your audience is super important. It's what makes you not a ghost at a keyboard. When I can't see you, you are a ghost at a keyboard. I don't know you. I don't know who you are. Why you're putting out your facts. Yes, have an opinion, but know who that opinion is by. So have your picture on the site. You're building a connection. That's important. Number five. Always be helpful. People come to Google with questions. Your post pops up and those people want answers. They need answers because they ask the question. So give them your answer. Give them your opinion. Give them your tips. Teach them what you know. Give your expert opinions. That's what they want. Give the people what they want. Help them out. Remember that the object, the goal of blogging is to help people out. You've got information. You're giving them your information. If you blog about your life, why are you blogging about your life? So people can read it and learn. Don't make your mistakes and have success where you had success. You're helping people out and that's the goal. That's why you want the connection. So that they feel safe when they take advice from you. Be helpful. The goal is to be helpful. So keep that in mind as you write. This right here is actually about speaking. This post is about the upsides of not using notes. And I'm teaching you. I'm being helpful. And that's the goal. Remember that. Tip number five. Big number. Remember it. Always be helpful. We're getting through these pretty fast. This is good. Tip number six. Allow comments. This can be scary. I know. Because you might get hate comments. But comments are also a great way to connect with your audience. And that's what we're striving for. You want open communication with your audience. I've gotten comments that range from what are you using on your site as your theme. I'm using Astra. All the way to how do you know what to write. I'm a blogger and I'm struggling and I don't know what to write. And I help them because help is important. We just talked about that. Comments is a great way to connect with your audience and build that community that you want. However, like I said, it's scary to get hate comments. Mean comments about your post. Yeah, this wasn't this wasn't your best. I don't agree with what you're saying because you put your opinion out there and I disagree. So delete anything and everything that you find to be mean to you or your community. Protect them. It's important. And tip number seven. Don't worry about looks. This is my home page. Nothing super special. How's my name and my picture and my posts? Is it beautiful? Maybe not. But that's not what's important. What's important is the content. Because people come to your site not looking for something beautiful to look at, but to answer a question, to know about you. They're coming to your site looking for the content. So don't focus all of your time on what your site looks like. Focus a little bit of time there and then move on to your content because that's what people are looking for. Tip number eight. This is one of the biggest. Haven't about page. Your picture is not enough. Your about page is all about you. You're going to tell your audience about yourself. Why should they believe you about your opinions? What's your experience? Tell them some personal stuff too. Like what's your favorite color? I don't know. Make it personal. This helps your audience connect with you in a way that they don't connect with some other websites. This is my about page. Maybe you've been reading it. I don't know. But this helps you connect with what I'm saying. And this helps you know if you'll be able to relate to me when I talk about my experiences. I have a friend. Her name is Navea and she posts about fashion. I know her and I respect her opinion. I respect it more than I would respect the opinion of cosmopolitan. Yeah, they're super successful. But I don't know who the heck is writing for them. How do I know that I can trust what they're saying? But I can trust my friend Navea because I know about her. Now there are people across the world that don't know about you. They aren't your personal friends, but with your about page, they can feel like they are your personal friends. They know you and now they feel comfortable with you to go into your posts and read them and understand you and where you're coming from. They get it and they will respect your opinion too. More than they'll respect other sites. Tip number nine. Finish when your thought is out. A lot of people struggle with how long should my post be? Should it be 500 words, 1,000 words, 12 words? I don't know. One of these posts is over 20 paragraphs long. That's intentionality. I had a lot to say about that. Don't tell my English teacher this because she'll have me do extra work, but that's over four or five paragraph essays. And I wrote that in like one night. The other isn't even five paragraphs. I didn't have a lot to say about pen pals. I thought it was an important post, but there's not much to say about it. You explain what it is. You explain why it's important. Boom, you're done. There's not really a perfect place to end your post because it's not really important. What's important is that your thought is out. Your content is out there. People will read it if you're using your headers. So don't think, all right, I've got to make it to 500 words. Keep writing, keep writing, keep writing. I have to make it to 1,000 words. Keep writing, keep writing, keep writing. 2,000 words. It's not how far you can go. Finish when your thought is out. When you've completed what you were going in with, what you were going to try and say, when you're done with that, when you've written what you can write, you're done. And that's it. And then you hit publish and you're done, but you don't have to hit publish. There's this handy, dandy little button called save draft. I really like this because you can tinker with a post until it feels just right. Especially if it's a post that's near and dear to your heart. Some of those posts that are really important to you will come out super fast. You'll write it all in one night and it'll be great and it's perfect. You're like, all right, I just did that because your heart knows what it wants to say. Others, you'll want to mess around with for a bit. You want to make sure that what you're putting out there is what you truly believe. So hit the save draft until you're ready to publish. Don't leave it in your drafts forever, but it's okay to use that. You don't have to be done with a post after you're finished with your first draft, but by all means, hit publish. This is not from my site. It is actually from my lovely mothers right here in the first row. Say hi, mom. She runs a site called giftedlives.com. Go check that out. It's a lot of stories about me and my brother, so maybe don't check it out. She is a victim of the infamous imposter syndrome. She doesn't want to hit publish. She's so afraid to hit publish. What if it's not good enough? But her posts are great. So figure out for you what it's going to take to hit publish. For my mom, she likes to run it by me, and then my brother, and then my dad, and then five other people on Facebook. I don't know. She likes to check back to the prompt, which is usually a question asked by someone on Facebook, and then she's like, all right. I'm ready. For me, a long time, it was asking my dad, hey, is this all right? Is this a good post? Now I just have to take a deep breath and be ready and hit it because I've been blogging for five years. Whatever it takes for you to feel comfortable enough to hit publish, that's what it is. Use it. Do it over and over and over and over again until eventually all it takes is number 12. This one is one of the hardest to follow. Keep at it. I had a really hard time with keeping at it for most of that five years. There were times where I would take three months off of blogging because I didn't know if I was going to have anything good to say. The most recent one of those was I blogged in October and didn't blog again until like two weeks ago because I was so nervous. You're probably wondering now why am I listening to her, but it's okay to take breaks. We have to keep at it. Take breaks with the promise that you're going to come back and write more. Don't throw the side away. Don't say I'm never doing this again because you should. You should keep going. And eventually you'll get into the groove of it and you'll keep writing and you'll enjoy it again. But don't give up. This is my post dashboard. It's full of posts. And yours might not be there yet. And that is perfectly okay because it took me a really, really long time to get here. Don't check the dates on those. There are big gaps in between. But yeah, it'll take time because you have to keep going over and over and over again. Keep hitting publish, save draft, and then hit publish again. This last tip is one that not a lot of people want to hear. I get a lot of excuses, but you will find your voice. A lot of people have questions about how do I find my voice? Well, how do I know what words to use? Is this word too big or like, is it too simple? How do I know what punctuation I should be using? Should I use that semicolon? Is this a comma splice? Is that okay? Is this creative writing or formal writing? I don't know what to say. Don't be worried, because it will come naturally with time, with keeping at it. And you'll start recognizing it. It's not about choosing a voice. It's about letting your voice come to you. Do you use a lot of compound sentences when you write? Maybe you do. That's your voice. This is a post where I have a question mark and an exclamation point. And a heart. I wrote this when I was like, little, okay, don't judge me. That's my voice. That's how I write. I write really casually. Maybe you write it like, this is like your college entry essay. If that's how you write, then write like that. That's totally fine. But don't try to go looking for your voice, because your voice is already there and it's inside you, and you just have to wait until you find it. And when you find it, it'll be a big moment for you. You'll realize, I've had this the entire time. And that's your voice. Those are 13 tips. It took me a really, really, really long time to compile this. Like, writing the speech didn't take too long, but to get here with 13 tips took me five years. And in five years of your blogging, you'll have 13 more tips. You'll have your own. And in five years, I'll have more. Because it's a journey. That's a little bonus one. Blogging is a journey. Thanks for coming. I really hope this has helped you. You can follow me on Instagram, Twitter. You can check out my website or you don't have to. I don't, that's you. But feel free to reach out to me while you're here. I want to know you, I want to know your story. I want you to be a part of this community. I'm making a connection with my audience connection. And I wish you the best of luck with your blogging journey. I think we're allowed to do questions now. Jesse has a microphone. Questions? So as a minor, how do you feel, how safe do you feel about sharing personal information online? I don't share specifics. I don't share names. I don't share a lot of things, but a story is a story. What happens in my life, I do blog about my life. I blog about life lessons. What does a 13-year-old know? But I do know a couple things. And I keep that there. And it's stories. And it is about my life. And I do feel comfortable sharing that. But I don't give a lot of specifics. So yeah, I'm not gonna put out my address. But no specifics, just the stories. Just the lessons. This is my brother. What do you wanna know? How would you get out of a point of time where you haven't been blogging? Well, it's hard. I have to sit back down at my computer. Most of the time when I don't write, it's not because I've been sitting at a blank page. It's mostly because I've been like, I don't have time or I don't have anything to write. But when you sit down at a computer and you have a blank page, you gotta fill it. You have to write something. I like to think about what's been happening in my life recently, since the last time I blogged. So the last time I blogged with that big stretch that I was talking about, I had blogged about Inktober because it was October, that's an art thing. I blog about art a little bit more now. And I had realized that since that, I've gotten really into bullet journaling. So I thought I'd post about that. So when you've taken a time off, open up your computer, set up that blank page, think about what's happened in your life since you last posted, something will ring a bell, write it. That's it. Hi, Emily, great job. I have worked in corporate world and I have a, I've seen a lot of presentations in yours, this top notch, I'm gonna do really, really well. I guess a question for you, so I'm trying to relate, right? So I'm going back, we're gonna say how many years, but do you ever find when you're blogging, is there any kind of social pressure to cater your content around maybe what you're hearing from friends and stuff like that? Or do you manage, do you manage to keep true to your own voice and only write about those things that's truly coming from you? That's a really good question. Um, I didn't really share my blog with my friends until I got Instagram, which was a couple months ago. So I never felt like my friends were watching. It was mostly my parents, my parents' friends, a whole bunch of adults, and I never felt a lot of pressure from them. Now that I do have friends watching, I will admit it's a little scary to write about life lessons because when faced with my friends, it feels like I don't know much, which is why I turned more to art where I know what I'm talking about. So there is a bit of pressure, but my quote unquote voice is still the casual tone it's always been when I'm having a conversation. What I write about just kind of changed and I think it changed even before I shared my blog with my friends that I knew that I was getting more into art and that was where I was gonna go with this. So yeah, little bit of pressure. How often do you blog, like how many posts do you think is a good amount to do during a week? During a week? I don't know about you guys, but being a freshman in high school, there's a lot that I'm doing. So I post as much as I can, but usually it's only about once a week. And there's a lot in my life and I'm sure that with adults it's the same that you have work and stuff. So just try and fit it in where you can, but life happens. So I try to stick to about one a week if I can because I know I have the weekends. But yeah, one a week is a good place to start. I just wanna know how you were introduced to WordPress. That is a lovely story. Well, my dad found WordPress first. And this dude right here, super cool, great blogger. I don't know where he's at right now, but he used to blog like every single day. He's been working in WordPress for the longest time and I remember I was at like Christmas party and I turned to my dad and I'm like, dad, you blog. He's like, yeah, I do. And I'm like, when can I get a blog? He's like, when you're eight, I was seven at the time. There was a good year. And of course in his mind it was like, it's a seven year old in a year, she's gonna totally have forgotten about this. Now while most dads wake up to, good morning dad, my dad woke up to, dad, I'm so excited, I'm gonna get a blog. And I said that every day until I was eight and he's like, all right, well I gotta get her a blog at this point. So that's my WordPress story. Really more of his. So you talk about not having to publish every time you start a story, kind of two part, is based on how many incomplete posts do you have right now and what do you do with posts that just go nowhere halfway through it? Well the first part, how many incomplete do I have right now? None at the moment. I try to go back and tinker with that post if I'm feeling like writing and then publish it because coming back with a fresh look and saying this is gonna be my post for the day, that's really helpful to not leave a whole bunch of drafts in there but if I know that this is gonna take a long time, I'll move on to the next one. As of right now, I don't have any incompletes. When a post is really gonna go nowhere, I realize that it's not the right post to write, that I clearly don't know enough about this topic to write about it so I usually scrap it until I do know, I'll write down what I was gonna write about but I scrap it until further notice when I do know what I'm talking about more and then I go back to that prompt and I rewrite it. So do you keep a journal or a long-running list of topics that you'd like to talk about, to blog about in the future? There's a lot, I keep, yes. I don't think I can walk into any store that sells journals without buying one unless I don't have money with me and if not then my mother does and I have to ask her and you say how many journals do you already have and I'm like give or take 10 but yeah, there's a lot and some of them are blank but some of them do have a purpose where I write about my day-to-day stuff I can look back into there and say all right, what's been happening in my life lately? What have I learned? Go back to an entry where I had a question, like I don't know how to deal with this. Clearly it's passed so how did I deal with it? I can write about that. I also have this handy-dandy iPhone so if an idea comes on the fly I can write it down in my notes app which I currently have like 50 notes, a lot. So yeah, I have a lot of journals, I have a notes app with lots of notes in them because ideas come all the time. This might be a stupid question but when do you know you've made it as a blogger? That's a really hard one for me because I've got this amazing role model right here that has made it and I always look up to him so I still haven't made it because I'm not like him yet. I don't get asked to speak at word camps. I don't go to several word camps per month. I don't have a bazillion people reading all the time so take it away dad. I'm going to go under the bus right now. Not even that. The question is how do you know when you've made it? I will tell you this when I first started writing for a period of three years I wrote every single day, seven days a week for three years straight on just WordPress. So when I started I had like 12 views and then 30 views and then 50 views and one day I got 100 views. I called my wife into my office and I'm like, look at this Google curve. Like I just, it's 100 views, right? No, it's just going. And she said, don't worry, it'll go back down. Most of the strikes again. So I think you know you've made it when the haters show up, right? That's how you know. When the haters show up then you're in a good spot. That while it took him a very long time to get to 100 he has some lovely friends that decided let's get as many people to get to Emily's site for her first post as possible and I got 100 in a day. So that felt like, made it. You sit in the splash zone right there. Welcome to my stand-up comedy. Made it again. Back on? It's also, all right, I bumped it. So seeing how you've been influenced to get into WordPress by your parents, do they let you admit it or do they keep their hands off? They do. They keep their hands off. They let me write what I write. For a long time I showed my post to my dad but that was of my own free will. I wanted his approval. I don't even know when the last time he checked my post before I published it was because they've been super great about letting me run this. So what about like that? Yeah, usually I go to my dad for that. Because. I don't even get paid for that. Yeah, yeah. So I'll go to him for that because he knows a lot of options. So he helps me out with that a lot. But post-wise, they keep their hands off most of the time. I got a follow-up question. What's your favorite plugin? We're gonna find out at Plugin' Palooza. I think we have time for one more question. All right. I know you said that there's really no amount of words so that you need to have on your blog but I'm finding that when I, well, since I just started, that they do seem to have a number that they say you should follow. But what's your take on that? I mean, I know you said that there really isn't a number of words but should it be like at least 200 or at least, you know what I'm saying? Well. Okay, he has an answer. If you have an answer, you take it, man. Well, I like what you said. I like what you said but I just, yeah. I mean, we just talked about keeping your hands off but you go right ahead. Yeah. That was your website so I'll keep my hands off your blog. So you're gonna get a lot of opinions on length. You're gonna get a lot of opinions. This is just one more opinion but I think that the thing that she said is the most important thing which is get the thought out and be done, right? Because you're still writing for people. So if it takes you 200 words and it takes you 700 words for something different and 1200 words for something different, get the thought out, do it well, be helpful, all the stuff she'd mentioned and in general, the minds behind Google will continue to adjust their answers to what audiences end up wanting. But you will still hear people say, well, if it's under 300, it's not gonna be part of the social graph that Google's gonna make of the article and therefore you're not gonna get it indexed. People will say, well, if it's not the average, it's now 15 to 2500 words is what's getting the most traction and the most backlinks and of course backlinks are a function of what we do, right? We go, ooh, that's a great resource, let me link to that, right? So Google is a follower of what all of us are doing and so that answer is always gonna adjust depending on how we adjust. But if you follow the I'm gonna be helpful and I'm gonna write until I'm done and then I'm done and I'm not gonna add more to it just to make it fluff, I think it'll be in a relatively good spot. Because that's the problem I'm talking about. Yeah. When I read that, it's gonna be start over. Right. Yeah. All right, thank you guys very much. I think I'm supposed to say that.