Brittany and Pays de la Loire Blog imageWelcome to our new guest blogger

I’m delighted to welcome Sarah-Jane Beaumont on board as our newest guest blogger. Sarah-Jane lives near Saumur and is married to a French Vigneron. Together, they manage their own holiday accommodation and organise wine tours and courses in the Loire Valley.

I’m looking forward to reading more contributions from Sarah-Jane.

Sarah-Jane joins our growing list of guest bloggers, each of whom has an interest in Brittany or Pays de la Loire. We still have space for a few more – so if you have something to write about, are interested in this part of France, and want a bigger audience, why not get in touch to find out more?…

Find out more about how you can benefit from the website

The French are World Champions… at being pessimistic!

It’s not my opinion, you understand, but the findings of an official survey carried out in 53 countries. A whopping 61% of French people thought their social and economic situation was worsening, compared to an average of 28% for the other countries surveyed. In her post citing the survey results, Nicola asks why the French are so pessimistic when they have so much to be cheerful about…

Read the article and leave us your own comments and thoughts

Is the rise in the French pension age justified?

I run polls on the site from time to time, and this month I would like to hear your views on the French Pension Age. There was a lot of unrest in France during 2010, caused at least partly by the government pushing through an increase in the pensionable age. What do you think? Is a 2-year rise justified? Should it be more or is 2 years about right?

Take our French Pension poll

Why not contact us if there is a question you would like polled to our readers next month?

New site launch – Brittany Holiday Lodge in chateau grounds

I’m proud to announce the launch of the new Chateau Val website for Jocelyn and Jas Saini to help market their beautiful holiday accommodation in the grounds of a Chateau near Saint Just in Brittany. The website was built using WordPress, so that Jas and Jocelyn can edit the site themselves, and has been translated into French to greatly increase the booking potential.

Visit the Chateau Val Website

Helping English website owners in France

Do you have a website that needs an update? Could you do with more traffic? Would you like more of your visitors to buy from you?

If you answered YES to any of the above then it might be worth talking to me. I have built several sites aimed at ‘English visitors to France’ and ‘English business owners in France’, and can help with issues such as what type of domain name to use, where to host your site, and how to provide multi-language versions of your site. I’m a Francophile web developer and a WordPress expert, and I know a lot about SEO. I love to help website owners get the best out of their web presence – without breaking the bank!

A word about Social Media

I’m a fan of Social Media. I don’t promote myself as an expert, but I do use tools such as Blogging, LinkedIn, and Twitter to help build my online network and promote my services. Social Media marketing isn’t a fad. It’s not going away in a hurry, so if you aren’t embracing it yet you probably should be. There are plenty of articles on how to get the most out of the various tools, so I’m not going to repeat those here, but if you need to talk about how you can incorporate Social Media into your main website strategy, please get in touch.

Ask me about your website project

Until next time…

Martin Jarvis, Blogger and Website Developer

P.S. Talking of Social Media, if you’re already on Twitter – follow me here.

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