DotCom Media’s

Who will win? The Nerd? The Super-Nerd? Or the Hot Nerd? You, the loyal reader decides!

There’s been a lot of hot-headedness and heated debate flying throughout the DotCom Media office and it’s time to put a stop to it once and for all. You have the overwhelming privilege of participating in the social networking battle of the decade! Three of our team members have been “tweeting” for the past little while in order to build their Twitter audiences. For Ryan, Dennis and Dylan, the challenge of acquiring qualified Twitter audience growth has led to trash-talk.

We need you to put the issue at rest and stop all the chest puffing so we can get back to work. So without further adieu, let's introduce our challengers!

Ryan Lahay, “The Work-a-holic” - Ryan is a lead developer at DCM. He uses Twitter to communicate on his 3 passions – development, the business, and rock climbing.

Dennis Powers, “The Wilie Veteran” - Dennis is the sales / account manager at DCM. He uses Twitter to communicate on interactive media development on the Internet and other interactive media formats.

Dylan Tyre, “The Rookie” - Dylan is a junior programmer at DCM. He uses Twitter to communicate on the the cool web apps he's working with and social injustices he experiences around the world.

Make sure to checkout www.dotcommediainc.com/twittertakedown for more information about these three, and how to get involved in the cause!

WE NEED YOUR HELP!! These three twits will stop at nothing for their own claim of online supremacy. We need you to sign-up to Twitter (if you aren't already signed up), then find and follow your favorite “tweeter”! Do it quick, because the Twitter Takedown will only run for the next four weeks with the all-important bragging rights going to the winner! Sign-up or login to Twitter now!

Need help getting started with Twitter? Twitip.com has 13 steps for Twitter beginners including how to set-up your Twitter account – http://www.twitip.com/13-twitter-tips-and-tutorials-for-beginners.

Next month we will announce the winner!

In the battle for online supremacy between social networking platforms: Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, Twitter has become the social network of choice over the past few months. Even though Facebook has just surpassed MySpace for total users, Twitter has been leading the way in percentage of growth as of late.

How can Twitter benefit you and your business? Some of the benefits to communicating on Twitter include:

• Following friends and family
• Following mentors, and people you respect
• Linking with prospects
• Linking with existing customers
• Staying current with trends
• Linking to great websites (like ours!)

Sign-up or login to Twitter today

DotCom Media, in partnership with Legend Resorts, has just launched the new website for Veranda Beach - a community of perfect family vacation beach houses, for sale or for rent, located on Lake Osoyoos in Washington. As an interesting side note client loyalty played a significant factor in DotCom Media securing this partnership. Our senior designer Spiro had developed the original Veranda Beach website while employed with another marketing firm. Being happy with his work, they sought him out wishing to work with him again.

"I was extremely flattered to have received the call from Jim Hammond." Spiro said. "Kelowna is a very close-knit community and I enjoy working with the same clients again and again. Especially ones like Legend which have a long-term vision and vested interest in developing the Okanagan in a positive way."

The website features our most advanced content management system (CMS) to date. "We really made some improvements to our CMS this time round by adding in a multiple layout feature so that clients can choose a different page layout depending on the content." said Ryan Lahay, senior developer. "We implemented a cottage database to handle both real estate and rental product, making it easy to toggle a property between the two. Each cottage has it's own photo gallery and is linked to a map. We also skinned their 3rd party rental management system so brand consistancy is maintained through the entire booking process.

If you have yet to organize your Summer vacation or just want a quick weekend getaway, check out Veranda Beach.

RSI News recently reported that the online channel represented 34 percent of overall retail revenue in 2008 - a growth rate of more than 42 percent since 2006. This percentage represents revenue from both online shopping and cross-channel shopping. Consumers who visit a retailer's website and shop at brick-and-mortar stores spend a good deal more than average shoppers, in some cases 50 percent more or higher.

Do you know what cross-channel shopping is? Do you know how it can benefit your business? Cross-channel shopping is the growing phenomenon where the majority of online consumers prefer to browse online and purchase offline. Online being your website, offline being your brick-and-mortar store.

Read More >>

How often do you pick up the Yellow Pages to look for a local business. If you are like me, my guess is that it's not as often as you used to. Today, we seem to go directly to our computers and our favorite Internet browsers, and we “Google it”.

Many of us are cross-channel shoppers . We like to do our research online, then drive down to the business we want to work with and purchase our required goods and services. In order to search online for the local business that's selling what we need, we generally need to perform a local search on the search engines. An example of this would be typing “Kelowna hotels” into the search engines rather than simply typing in “hotels”. The first keyphrase brings forward local search results, exactly what you're looking for. The latter might bring forward millions of results with pages and pages of links to hotel websites all over the world, not necessarily what you are looking for.

Read More >>

Before I start, everyone should visit www.dotcommediainc.com/twittertakedown to get caught up on the Twitter Takedown!

First, (and most importantly) we would like to congratulate our very own Beth, along with her husband Chris, on their new venture into parenthood. Jacob Walls was born June 19 2009, and is doing great!

Second, we are happy to annouce another new site launch. Verandabeach.com launched just a few weeks ago and is generating some great feedback! Make sure to check it out here. This was a great project, and we enjoyed being a part of it.

Also, we have another big announcement to make. After a long history with the company, both Ryan and Spiro have become partners in the operation of DotCom Media and WelcometoKelowna Ventures. Expect exciting things in the coming months.

Lastly, we would also like to thank a handful of our clients that stuck with us through a server crash in early July. We all know what it's like when your website goes down, and are glad to report we are back up and running, and have your websites on a brand-spanking-new server. Sorry for the inconvenience this caused everyone, and thanks again for your patience.