We know that the award-winning Horse & Hound website — www.horseandhound.co.uk — is the online resource for the equestrian community.
But the site’s impressive digital presence and growth is now catching the eye of influential commentators in the wider media.
The website was the subject of a two-page feature in The Independent newspaper on Monday (4 April), entitled ‘Horse & Hound: hotter than The Sun’ in which media editor Ian Burrell profiled the brand’s booming digital growth.
“You might think that a publication founded in 1884 and dedicated to such pursuits as dressage and cross-country riding would have little truck with new-fangled concepts like digital media,” he wrote. “You would be very wrong.
“Horse & Hound boasts more than 81,000 likes on Facebook, outranking such media brands as The Sun, The Guardian and heat magazine.”
Neil Robinson, digital director of Horse & Hound’s publisher IPC Media, believes the brand’s Facebook presence sets the benchmark in how magazines can respond to the public’s constantly evolving use of media.
“This brand [Horse & Hound] is just bonkers,” he tells Burrell. “It has got one of the most active communities I have ever seen online — they are constantly talking about this weekend’s gymkhana or their daughter having won a yellow rosette.”
As well as 82,000 followers on Facebook and just over 8,000 on Twitter, horseandhound.co.uk receives over 300,000 page views a day, making it the liveliest equestrian presence on the web.
