There are now approximately 75 million trillion* blogs clogging up the internet … but is blogging just useless chatter?!

And if so – why are blogs so popular with readers?

Once you start Blogging, you will find there are thousands of blogs and experts telling you how to do it “properly” – and the way to do that, apparently, is to “be useful”. That is, to write content that is useful to your readers (and so that people can find you via Google).

This is why you see so many posts with titles using the old “Who, What, When, Where, Why, How” approach, like this:

• How to Save those Smelly Shirts!
• When your Bed is in Front of a Window
• What to Feed a Crowd
• 10 Marriage Tips

As you can see, I’ve written more than a few of them myself !

The beauty of blogging for me, however, is that I think it can be both “useless chatter” (not that there’s anything wrong with that, as I’ll explain in a minute) as well as a way to share information. I love that blogging can be BOTH of these … and more!

Many times my posts may NOT seem all that useful – but I think they still are. They may not get picked up by the search engines, but that doesn’t mean they’re worthless or just useless chatter.

As I write them, it helps me to get more in touch with my own thoughts and feelings.

These are the posts where you really get to know ME, the person behind the blog.

It’s as I share my deepest thoughts (for example, in Crisis of Faith or Non-Morbid Thoughts of Death and Dying) and everyday happenings (Who Does the Washing up? or The Joy of Old Home Movies), that you get some idea of what life is like for this middle aged woman.

And maybe, you feel reassured. You are not alone.

You may see echoes of yourself (future, present or past) which make you feel that somebody else understands; that you have a friend.

Somebody you can chat to (via the blog comments, or Facebook, Instagram or Twitter), even if it is just online.

Personally? I reckon you can’t get much more useful than that!

So tell me, what sort of posts do you prefer here on Middle Aged Mama – helpful information, or useless chatter (like this post)?!

* Yes, I made this figure up.