Winemakers urged to take to the web

FOLLOWERS of the wine trade in France will have seen the online work of Ryan O'Connell that promotes the vineyard he founded with his parents called O’Vineyards, in the Languedoc.

He recently spoke about using simple oline tools to help winemakers get in touch with those discussing their wines on the internet.

The video above highlights his use of tools like Google Alerts and passive searching, which allows everybody with an email account to directly engage the people who are already talking about their wines on the web.

"We can't try to force winemakers to spend half of their day on sites like Twitter and Facebook," Ryan said.

"The sites are time consuming for people who don't already understand them, and it's hard to quantify whether they're helping business or not.

"But we have an enormous advantage in the Languedoc Roussillon. People already talk about our wines. The first step to putting the Languedoc Roussillon online is to simply respond to the comments that are already being made.

"We shouldn't wait for critics or journalists or bloggers to do our jobs for us. It's our responsibility to get out there and communicate."

And while Ryan's advice is aimed at those within the wine industry, anyone with a business in France who is keen to keep up to date what is going on in their field can make use of the tips he passes on in the video.