Have you ever thought about blogging R/C?
When we first launched actionrc.com.au a few years back, it was mostly about the brand name. About letting people know we were out and about, selling Schumacher cars and other bits and pieces. It was primarily marketing.  There have always been race reports and other content as well, but initially at least those were secondary (oh, and you don’t need to tell us…..we were no crash-hot web designers either!).
Along the way actionrc.com.au has morphed to the point where, at least from our perspective, it is first and foremost an R/C blog. Sure we still publish stuff about our business and our products, and we always will, but now this site has become a home for storytellers, a place where you (and we) can interact around opinions, news and stories about R/C racing.
We think (hope) that it serves a wider purpose than just our own little enterprise.
Blogs have grown over the past five years to the point where they are a significant aspect of life in our culture, and make up a lot of the world’s internet content.  Simply described, a blog is a regularly updated website, with stories (posts) published in chronological order – newest at the top.  Crucially, blogs also provide the capacity for readers to comment or interact with the story, and the author.  Some blogs are personal, some corporate, some political, some sport oriented. There are blogs about every aspect of life.
In R/C there are lots of blogs too.
Many of them are news related – product announcements and descriptions, occasional reviews, race reports, that kind of thing.  Some excellent examples include redrc and neo buggy – two sites that aggregate R/C news from all over the world into one easy-to-read location.
Some blogs are club, or track related. Take the Templestowe club’s blog for instance. Lots of writers, lots of stories, links to items that might be of interest to club members.
Then there are magazine or media blogs – like the ones from the writers at Xtreme R/C Cars magazine or the classic new-media blog at big squid rc. Or manufacturer blogs, reporting the latest product news or stories from race teams.  Take Proline Factory Team and JConcepts blogs for example.
And then there are personal blogs. Stories from the daily R/C adventures of racers like you and me. Some report from big races they are attending, some from local clubbies.  Some are the “pro” racers, and some not.  A couple we like are johhnyboydotca and Alexander Hagberg.  Locally we like to keep tabs on beachmumsracing, and who could forget tones, the newest blogger on the Queensland R/C scene.
Our blog? We like to think of actionrc.com.au as a bit of a jack of all trades.  We do publish some product news, mostly – but not always – related to the gear we race (and sell).  We publish stories from our own day-to-day racing experiences. We publish race reports from races we get to.  We write and publish opinion pieces about various aspects of R/C. We like telling stories and interacting around those stories.   And we really like the community that interacts around actionrc.com.au. Some of you are customers, some not, some we race with regularly, others who check in from all over the globe. All have become part of our little community that loves R/C and likes a bit of a story.  We have a few guys contributing stories occasionally, but mostly it’s heavy and scott putting together the content. We’ll take the blame!
The point of all of this is to say…..have you ever thought about starting your own R/C blog?  The tools are cheap (or free) and there are plenty of ways to get started.  The beauty of blogs is that they don’t detract from one another. You blogging on R/C doesn’t take away from what we do here, or vice-versa. Linking from one blog to another is just another way to extend and expand the conversation.
I’ll post again in a couple of days with some basic information on how you can get started on an R/C blog of your own.
In the meantime….have you ever thought about blogging R/C?  What angle could you take to your own blog?  And what are some of your favourite R/C blogs?