In these final few weeks of holiday shopping, you've probably read quite a few online reviews of products you're considering as gifts for family and friends. Tasked with choosing between fourteen different desktop water fountains with similar features, you might resort to making your final decision based on the number and quality of online reviews you find on the product sites. According to a survey by Search Engine Land, 72 percent of you are definitely doing that.

Here is some data from the survey, courtesy of the Yelp blog:

• A majority of consumers use online reviews to make spending decisions.
• A single review isn't likely to make or break you. In fact, 65% of consumers (vs. 58% in 2010) are reading between 2-10 reviews when researching local businesses.
• According to the survey, 72% of consumers give the same weight to online reviews as they do to personal recommendations

As a REALTOR®, your skillset is your product, and ReachFactor helps you leverage client reviews or testimonials to build an online reputation along with other forms of automated marketing like Facebook pages, Craigslist flyers, and your online profile on the ReachFactor site. Plus, the reviews are manually verified, so both agents and prospects can feel confident about the testimonials.

Your real estate agent reviews serve the purpose of marketing and reputation-building. Once they're in the can, they're out there marketing your skills and track record. But as a business owner, these testimonials do much more than that: They provide you and your colleagues with valuable feedback that can positively affect future transactions and generate repeat customers.

If you're not sure how to get more client reviews, here are some pointers from an agent using ReachFactor: A Top Agent's Tips on Securing Client Reviews.

Or, if you have suggestions on how to draw testimonials from your clients, please share them in the comments section below.

To view the original article, visit the ReachFactor blog.

For More Information

• See Build Your Portfolio of Online Recommendations
• Read Word of Mouth vs. Online Agent Ratings
• Learn more about Agent Ratings in our article library