While at Inman’s Bloggers Connect, I was able to meet a lot of people. It was my primary reason for going. But somehow, I never did get a chance to say hello to Mary Pope-Handy. Luckily, she was up for this interview! I originally intended to focus primarily on Project Blogger, but my questions led to another interesting topic as well. Read on.
I want to congratulate you on winning Active Rain’s (and Inman’s) Project Blogger contest. Would you please reflect back a little on the experience?
I’m glad to do that. It was a big committment, the experience had a large impact on me and in some ways, I’m still digesting a bit of it. It is SO neat that we were able to assign the $5000 prize to a great charity, CARE. I’m very thankful to Frances Flynn Thorsen, the managing editor of Real Town, for her mentorship, and also to Joeann Fossland (my real estate coach), for introducing me to Fran.
What originally motivated you to start blogging?
I’ve had good success with web marketing so keep developing that avenue for finding and retaining good clients. I started my main website, www.PopeHandy.com, in 1998 I believe. About 4 years ago, I think it was, I realized that if “one’s good, maybe two’re better”. I was meeting good people and closing sales off my first website so added a second one through Best Image/#1 Expert.*
Well, not in the shower, that’s for sure (just ask my hubby about my awful singing). I began developing my voice before I developed my blog. In reading all sorts of blogs (and figuring out what the heck a blog was), my frequent comments actually formed what became my blog.
Lemme know!” 
At first I thought that keeping the two separate was going to be a necessary challenge. In fact, I have found it quite easy. When I first started 
At first I wanted to provide the consumer my strong opinions about the mortgage process. I realized people love to search for homes on the internet and felt it would be valuable if I could inject some education on the mortgage process. A couple of weeks later I started the real estate blog. I was advised to do them both on one blog and probably should have taken that advice.
Local REALTOR association leadership in the Lehigh Valley, PA, was not happy with some “constructive criticism” I shared on the association listserv. The association started to publish their own homes magazine and I thought the project had an amateurish appearance and needed some serious attention to layout and design. They removed my name from the listserv thinking that would still my voice, I guess.
Actually I consider myself “triblogular.” “Bi” would be two, “tri” is three? I do consider both my presence on ActiveRain and my RealTownblog blogs even if they are part of a network of blogs to be “my blogs.” I don’t think I understood that RealTownBlogs and ActiveRain were the same thing only different until quite recently. ActiveRain has such great Google Juice it is probably the greatest thing to happen to real estate blogging since real estate blogging happened.
One of the highlights to my trip to San Fransisco this summer was a lunch with Pat Kitano. A long time online friend, it was great to meet him in person. Pat took us to a Vietnamese kitchen that, until recently, almost any tourist would miss. It made me think about the best part of Web2.0. Just a few years ago, if a restaurant wasn’t in 
I bet at least a few of you thought I was going to interview myself. I’m not that vain. However, Dustin Luther of Rain City 
I created Blown Mortgage with the same inspiration that led me to start New Day Trust Mortgage. I have always been a big believer in consumer advocacy. I believe that business should help the American public first and profit second. We try to do that every day with New Day Trust Mortgage; but it is very difficult to reach that level consistently across a big organization, particularly in situations as complex and emotional as home financing transactions. In addition, people tend to be very leery about anything that comes from the corporate megaphone of a mortgage company. Trying to get the consumer advocate position across in a corporate communication is limited in its effectiveness as people have built up a large distrust towards our industry.
Marketing has always been the cornerstone of my real estate business. It was always an extremely effective tool and I seemed to have a special knack for it. My mailers were innovative, original, informative and brought value to the recipients. Large mailers would almost always net a listing or two; they went out roughly every 3 weeks. Local advertising also produced excellent results often securing the buyers for my listings. Normally I would get 5-25 calls a week just from the local newspaper ads. That all changed last year. The mailers stopped producing results, the phones stopped ringing. Something had to be done, my business was at stake.