In years past, finding a contractor or service professional involved thumbing through a phone book, checking with the BBB, and asking one or two friends or associates if they could recommend someone.  Today, consumers have access to so much more information and a multitude of choices.  To weed through all of this information, they are relying more and more on their social graphs to find reputable, high quality companies.

Here’s a typical scenario of how companies are being found today…

I have a friend who just bought a new home. She is in the throws of decorating, renovating and furnishing this home, and needed a contractor to do some renovations in her kitchen.

Conduct a Google Search & Read Through Reviews

First, she Googled “Kitchen Contractors” and a social review site called servicemagic.com came up.  The site has thousands of reviews, and she spent some time checking the reviews on contractors.

Ask for Recommendations from Friends on Facebook

Second, she posted to her Facebook Friends, asking if anyone knew of a good contractor who specializes in kitchen renovations.

Ask for Recommendations from Followers on Twitter

Third, she posted the same question to her followers on Twitter.

Cross-reference Comments

After receiving many replies, she cross-referenced the comments (giving the most weight to those she received from her Facebook Friends).

Read Reviews on Recommended Contractors & Checkout Websites

She then went back to the Service Magic site and looked up the reviews of the recommended contractors and checked out each of their websites.

Choose Contractor & Post Review

After the kitchen remodel was complete, my friend wrote a glowing review about the wonderful work provided by the contractor on Facebook.

This post received 15 “likes” (which went out to all of her friends and her friends’ friends).

Finding a service professional or contractor in this way is becoming more and more common.  If you are a service professional or contractor (or any other type of business for that matter), it’s important to understand your customers’ buying process and position your business in a way that makes it easy for potential customers to find you and satisfied customers to recommend you to others.