That about sums up our evening at the Citizen's Bank Park in the fantastic South Philadelphia Sports and Entertainment District. This area gives one more reason to love Philadelphia. Thank you RE/MAX International (Erin, Sara and Wes seen one of the photos below) for organizing and setting up such a wonderful event ! It was a great time to be with RE/MAX friends and family at such a great venue. And thanks for sponsoring some of the greatest sports teams in the United States - the Philadelphia Phillies and the Eagles !
The Citizens Bank Park is so much fun and is a 100% pleasant experience for the entire family. Every seat is a goon one. The food is abundant and the drinks are ice cold with a super selection !
Philadelphia is "The City of Brotherly Love" and if you haven't noticed, Philadelphia fans are passionate. It is as much fun to hear them cheer as it is to hear them boo! For Philadelphia a "boo" is not so much poor sportsmanship as much as it is our way of saying ...
... "You suck! But we love you any way : )" At least that is my translation.
Come and visit South Philadelphia. Heck, just move to Philadelphia ! And when you do, give us a hollar. We can do some "hardly working" with you!
Areas of specialty include Northern Liberties, Old City, Center City, Fishtown, Graduate Hospital, Art Museum, Queen Village, Pennsport, Old Kensington, Port Richmond, Bridesburg, Society Hill, Loft District, Spring Garden and more !
It was a big decision to move from Port Richmond, a neighborhood to which the owners Chris Somers and Steve Osiecki have many deep ties. But the door of opportunity opened and they stepped into a new and exciting Real Estate future with a new location in Northern Liberties, a new construction building that is modern, sleek and posh in a dynamic area for consumers and agents alike. In addition, the office will now be able to serve a greater portion of the Riverfront Neighborhoods into Center City because of its more centralized location. The office is a Philadelphia brokerage, serving all of Philadelphia in addition to Bucks and Montgomery counties.
Northern Liberties itself offers a series of challenges as far as selling and buying is concerned.The market slow down has affected many of the high profile developers as a few projects have either slowed down or sadly failed on their first effort. But Chris and Steve have a much brighter perspective and the skills to help propel their colleagues to meet growing success in their new location. The area is extremely vibrant and energetic with tremendous room to grow.
The Rialto Building itself is a 7 story all glass professional building. It is part of the Piazza project, an area surrounded by an incredible array of gastro pubs, fine restaurants and casual fooderies as well as shopping, galleries, boutiques, and entertainment. Parking is free and abundant. Who would not want to come here every day to work and partake in such a dynamic culture - top agents and consumers alike ?
The suit does not make the man in the same way that the building will not make the business but in this case The Rialto location certainly builds confidence and pride, especially the incredible view from the settlement room of all of Philly ! There is something to be said about that and more !
Areas of specialty include Northern Liberties, Old City, Center City, Fishtown, Graduate Hospital, Art Museum, Queen Village, Pennsport, Old Kensington, Port Richmond, Bridesburg, Society Hill, Loft District, Spring Garden and more !
Being that I think this is such a GREAT IDEA, I wanted to mention it in our blog as well !
The City of Philadelphia and its agencies own more than 35,000 properties, many of which are abandoned shells or "blighted" properties. These properties become havens for squatters and drug houses. Further, they bring down the values of all the other properties on the block and in the neighborhood. I am not too sure what their goal has been in the past in holding these properties, many of which are owned by the Redevelopment Authority of Philadelphia. Saving them for a rainy day ? Holding out for real estate appreciation ? I have no idea. (If anyone knows why cities would hold on to these properties instead of selling them through a program like this, please comment below.)
The benefits of the SCOPE (Selling City Owned Properties Efficiently) program are enormous. Not only are transfer taxes paid to the city and the properties put back on the tax roll, but more importantly, the properties can finally begin to be refurbished, thus improving the immediate neighborhood and community !
The example that Kim Shindle gives in her article in The Pennsylvania Realtor is Baltimore: "The City of Baltimore joined forces with the Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors and successfully launched this program, selling more than 250 properties and generating $6 million in revenue for the city." Wow ! In this current economic crunch, I am sure the City of Philadelphia would be all over this program. So they agreed to let 9 properties go. Not sure why it is not 900 but it is a start ! All great things need to start somewhere...
So I wanted to take this moment and give a loud congrats to GPAR who made this happen and the Realtors instrumental in this program, Al Perry, William Festa and Jin Gao. I think together working with the City this could lead to something extremely beneficial to our taxpayers of Philadelphia !
What are your thoughts about the potential of this progam ?
Areas of specialty include Northern Liberties, Old City, Center City, Fishtown, Graduate Hospital, Art Museum, Queen Village, Pennsport, Old Kensington, Port Richmond, Bridesburg, Society Hill, Loft District, Spring Garden and more !
Have you ever received a lead in your internet inbox ? Have you ever replied to this lead with a heart felt dazzling response that included links and incredible information that you are sure they will be so impressed by you they’ll hire you on the spot to be their life long Realtor ? Then to find a few minutes later it was a FAKE email address !?!
Sadly, and with great humility, I admit to doing it way too often. And what is worse ? Once I look at the email address I was mailing to, I feel like an even bigger idiot because the sender clearly spelled it out to me. "I AM NOT INTERESTED IN RECEIVING ANY INFO FROM YOU !! "
Some of the email names are just too funny. Here are a few examples of the fake email addresses we responded to: hahaha@lalala.com (our personal favorite) mickeymouse@donaldducks.com imnottellingyou@anypointintime.com noneofyourbiz@noneofyourbiz.com noway@jose.com yougottabe@dreaming.com nicetry@wiseguy.com 123@ABC.com fspekfyxmql@duh.com
We know this must have happened to some of you! We'd like to hear some of the funny fake email addresses you've encountered.
I am going to Hop right to the point on this blog post !
Even though the last week was admittedly very slow due to the 4th of July Holiday, our internet fairies were hard at work. While we were out enjoying the Philadelphia life, we continued to receive the following leads from a few websites on the internet.
This is not a tall tale folks. Typically we will receive between 4-8 per week from the above websites. And when I say "lead" I mean to say that 7 people reached out to contact us for more information regarding a property. I did not cold call, and I did not spend time or money to send them mailers. In fact I did nothing but post my listing on their website weeks ago.
Six of the seven leads contacted us through the provider's website but we have received several incoming new leads that have reached out to us and connected with us directly from our personal websiteTheSomersTeam.comand a few other sites such as craigslist.com. It is important to use your website as a landing page and link any information you post out there in cyber-never-land to that landing page so people will have ways to see you, learn more about you and connect with you !
In the past, it took about 10 leads to reach 1 ready willing and able client. But these days it is more like 15 to 20 for us. Whew !! That's Kissing a lot of Frogs !! So, we need to work hard and get our faces in front of a lot of people before we can convert them into clients, strong relationships, and dare I say Princes !!
Whatever website attracts buyers and sellers in your local area is where you should focus your time and money. Ask your current clients where they like to search for property information. Ask your coworkers, ask your peers in a related industry, or ask your neighbors and family where they look for Real Estate Information. Their answers may be very telling !
It was July the 3rd in Philadelphiaand we thought we'd venture into the city on foot to see what was going on. There is always something going on in Philadelphia. If you live in the area, you know that this was not only the EVE of the 4th of July but it was also the First Friday monthly event in Old City, when all of the Galleries open their doors and artists fill the streets with their most creative works of art for sale.
In Philadelphia, this is the weekend nearly the entire population of Philadelphia packs their towels and sunscreen and heads "down the shore". That's the Jersey Shore for those of you who have no Philly in your blood and don't know the difference between "the beach" and "down the shore". There is a difference, trust me!
Areas of specialty include Northern Liberties, Old City, Center City, Fishtown, Graduate Hospital, Art Museum, Queen Village, Pennsport, Old Kensington, Port Richmond, Bridesburg, Society Hill, Loft District, Spring Garden and more !
One of the benefits on being on Active Rain for a little bit or blogging on on your own is that gives you the opportunity to go back and review your old blog posts. In my case, I can laugh at some of our older blog posts and can see our growth over time.
More importantly, it gives me the opportunity to assess and reflect what I am doing as a blogger. Do you see improvement in your blogging year over year, quarter or quarter or month over month ? There are so many things that go into one's blog such as content, design, style, photos and videos, links, keywords and the like.
This thought came about when Stephanie and I noticed that our tags for our blogs are completely out of control In the beginning and even later blog posts, I did not fully understand the tagging concept. So last night I went back to the first blog post I wrote in 2008 and one by one, am starting to update the tags. That is when I thought about the potential for this blog post as I was thinking about the multitude of benefits from reviewing your old blog posts.
They are as follows:
Assessing your blog content: Are you writing about relevant subjects ? Engaging your readers ? Which of your older blog posts generated more comments ?
Blog Style- How is your design now compared to then ? Are you utilizing photos and video ? Is your alignment better ? Font type and size used more effectively ? Do your blogs have a sleeker look ? Is there enough white space and not too long-winded ?
Linking- Reviewing old blogs allows you to add relevant links that you may have forgot to do back then. It also allows you the opportunity to link to newer blogs and so forth. Interlinking strategies can provide for greater readership and stickiness to your blog.
Keywords- Are you using keywords in your old blogs ? If not, you can take a moment or two to add some of those relevant keywords in your old blog post. Also, perhaps even the title too.
Updating - I added a little update on some of my old blog posts. For example, if I was talking about a property, I updated that we successfully sold the property and so forth.
Tags - Like I mentioned above, having appropriate tags are important as your blog is more structured and organized. Ours had too numerous and redundant tags (and still does) as we have many blog posts to go through.
Planning for the future- I think by reviewing your older blog posts can give you thoughts, directions and insight in terms of where do you want to take your blog in the future ? Who is your audience ? Who do you want your audience to be ? What is your blogging strategy ?
With us, blogging is fun and we enjoy it.But we primarily do it to grow our business. We have benefited greatly in one year by receiving countless leads and clients who found us through our blog. Our goal is to continue that and even grow that part of our business through our Internet marketing strategy. Thus, it is important to us to provide fresh, quality content as well as being consistent with it, week in and week out.
We love the fact that when a consumer types in a few keywords about our local market, that chances are, our blog posts will be at the top of Google ! And when they get there, we need our content strong enough for them to contact us when they are ready !
In the future, we will be more cognizant in reviewing older blog posts more often to make sure they are updated, have keywords and appropriate links. So when you have a day of down time here and there, why not take the time to go into your archives and do this exercise. If you do, please let us know your experiences and insight. And especially so if you have already done this in the past !
What other benefits are there in reviewing your old blog posts ?
If you like these types of blog posts, please join the Active Rain Group "Build a Better Blog" today. And subscribe to our blog to follow along ! Is just a click away !
Do not miss out on the fun events this weekend in Philadelphia for July 4th ! If you are staying in town, come on out. If you do not have plans as of yet, definitely come into Philly ! It will be a ton of fun with all-day events, parade and fireworks ! The partying will be non-stop !
Areas of specialty include Northern Liberties, Old City, Center City, Fishtown, Graduate Hospital, Art Museum, Queen Village, Pennsport, Old Kensington, Port Richmond, Bridesburg, Society Hill, Loft District, Spring Garden and more !
I fired Realtor.com and I am not going to apologize for doing it ! That’s right - 3 years, well over $12 thousand dollars, and hundreds of “woman-hours” later, I finally said enough is enough! (Yeah, I have a little fire in my belly ; )
I am no longer going to enable this monster of a website just because they “rank high”.
Maybe I am nuts, maybe I am just darn right insane since Realtor.com is the top ranking Real Estate website in the United States. But being the CEO and head chef and bottle washer for my business, I took a stand.
1) Way Too Expensive- I was paying several thousands of dollars every year to manually enhance our 50 plus listings which provided little benefit other than the bragging rights that I can enhance my listings. 2) Poor quality leads- the leads that did get to me were not serious, not qualified, or just wanted to talk about real estate. 3) Scant leads- I may have gotten 1-2 emails or calls per month and I could not trace 1 sale from it. Further, we received low traffic from Realtor.com to The Somers Team website on our google analytics. 4) Not team players- once you are a subscriber the only way to increase your success as a user is to continue to upgrade your package. I tried some or their expensive upgrades. (fruitless) 5) Passive aggressive sales tactics- every time I expressed my concerns regarding the site’s performance relative to my goals, the Realtor.com representatives blamed my “lack of openness” to: 1) buying more tools, 2) being creative enough to use effective “call to action” phrases (of which I spent hundreds of hours doing over the last 3 years), 3) being small minded about the positive effect Realtor.com has on our branding. 6) Weak local appeal- when I asked our marketing team Intention Marketingtheir opinion on my desire to fire, they said that Realtor.com may be where people go to “get a feel of the market” but people are looking at so many other sources that I can safely beef-up my presence using Social Media venues, grow through SEO, and utilize the other Top Ranking sites that are taking market share from Realtor.com in addition to growing on our local presence with The Somers Team .
With the money I will be saving this year by firing Realtor.com I could ...
1) Take a European vacation or maybe visit Hawaii 2) Buy many expensive pairs of shoes at Nordstrums or Neiman Marcus 3) Put a down payment on an investment property or do a home improvement 4) Donate to a charity 5) Pay credit card bills 6) Make a few mortgage payments 7) Put a down payment on a new car with satellite radio and a GPS system built in 8) etc...
Areas of specialty include Northern Liberties, Old City, Center City, Fishtown, Graduate Hospital, Art Museum, Queen Village, Pennsport, Old Kensington, Port Richmond, Bridesburg, Society Hill, Loft District, Spring Garden and more !
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Disclaimer: ActiveRain Corp. does not necessarily endorse the real estate agents, loan officers and brokers listed on this site. These real estate profiles, blogs and blog entries are provided here as a courtesy to our visitors to help them make an informed decision when buying or selling a house. ActiveRain Corp. takes no responsibility for the content in these profiles, that are written by the members of this community.
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