The Roar makes two new hires
Sporting website The Roar has created two new roles through the appointment of a head of content and community and a sales and commercial director.
The announcement:
August 8, 2011 –
Sporting website www.theroar.com.au has made two senior staff hires as it looks to expand its operations.
Tristan Rayner has been appointed as the head of content and community with Conversant Media, with a main focus on shaping the editorial direction of The Roar, while Alana Saphin has been hired as sales and commercial director.
Rayner has a deep background in online communities and his role is to drive editorial innovation and growth for the citizen journalism focused website. Saphin joins The Roar from Match Media, and during her career she has also worked for Ikon and on brands such as The Campari Group, Pfizer, Westfield and the Australian Rugby Union (ARU). Saphin’s role is to head sales for The Roar and lead the commercial growth of the business.
Zac Zavos, managing director of Conversant Media, said The Roar will be making more staff hires in the coming months.
“With these two hires joining our team for newly created roles, we’ve seen The Roar experience very solid growth. We recently cracked 400,000 monthly unique browsers, and commercials have followed our traffic growth. For a small company, we’ve been lucky to attract such outstanding people and they will really help The Roar become the number one sports opinion website in Australia.”
Alana Saphin, sales and commercial director of The Roar, said: “Brands are now recognising more than ever the value of engaged audiences, great content, and the ability to reach passionate communities. Conversant Media is unique in the market: we offer the passion of a niche community, while also possessing solid audience volumes. We’re seeing strong interest from advertisers – The Roar is sold out for the entire Rugby World Cup!”
Each month, The Roar receives more than 20,000 comments and publishes over 330 edited fan articles. Every six days, the equivalent of War and Peace (560,000 words) is written on the site by the fans.
The Roar, which was founded in 2007, is Australia’s largest citizen journalism community and its presence spans an iPhone app and a daily email newsletter. It recently launched its first-ever TV advertising campaign.
Conversant Media is an Australian-based media company that publishes the sites www.theroar.com.au, www.lostateminor.com and builds iPhone applications for publishers. The innovative weather site, http://www.willyweather.com.au/ is also represented by Conversant Media.
Source: Conversant Media press release
