Blogger Spotlight on Vered Deleeuw of MomGrind

Vered Deleeuw of MomGrind.

Vered Deleeuw is a blogger for hire, a term you didn’t hear much up until recently. But Deleeuw is among a burgeoning number of tech savvy writers ready to help individuals and companies find an audience on the web. She also keeps a personal blog, in which she talks about everything from blogging to Obama’s recent speech on education to cupcake recipes.

We caught up with Deleeuw and asked her about her writing, family, and the role of social media in the home.

In a MomGrind article you wrote about children’s self-esteem, you advised that parents should “encourage your children to be adventurous and to try new things.” How can parents tell where the line between “adventurous” and “risky” is?

Simply listen to your instincts. I know I write a “mom blog,” and I sometimes give advice to other moms, but I’ll confess that I rarely take advice from others. I strongly believe that parents should listen to their own instincts instead of relying so much on information from the outside (books, blogs, etc.).

You cover a wide array of topics on MomGrind, yet it still feels very focused. How do you decide what’s off topic or not appropriate for the blog?

I write on topics that I find interesting. Since I’m a 38-year-old woman, my readers, who are mostly women ages 25-45, find my topics interesting. I don’t really have rules on what’s not appropriate for my blog except that I want my kids to be able to read it, so I don’t write anything that I wouldn’t want them to read (they are 8 and 10).

What advice do you have for moms that want to start blogging about their family for fun and for profit?

If you want to blog because it seems like a good way to share your daily life with friends and family, you don’t really need my advice, except that I would encourage you to be aware that a blog is a very public platform and anything you put there can be read by anyone.

If you want to make money blogging, you should realize that most bloggers make very little money from their blogs. If you still want to give it a try, learn as much as you can about how to blog and about search engine optimization before you start.

You’re a very active Twitter user — what do you say to people who don’t “get it”?

Twitter is an excellent networking tool. It enables me to share my thoughts and ideas with a large group of people — much larger than my real-life network. I would encourage anyone to stick with it for a few weeks before deciding it’s useless.

What’s a good age for kids to let kids start using social networking sites?

My kids have been using Club Penguin since they were 6 and 8. We taught them the basic rules of sharing information on the Internet (no sharing of real names, home address and phone number, or name of their school) and explained that they never really know who’s on the other side of an internet communication. We reinforce the rules once in a while and occasionally check on them while they’re playing to make sure they follow them.