How Facebook or LinkedIn can help promote professional services.

One of the hardest decisions to make is choosing someone to perform a professional service such as a new dentist or elective surgery like Lasik.  Part of the reason for this is that we typically do not have much experience in the area.  We may only need the service once and after the service is done we lose interest in the subject.  If your new roof has a 25-year warranty, you will forget about it after the work is done.

Another reason that we have trouble choosing professional services like a plumber or painter is that it is hard to find someone in our network who has needed the same service.  Imagine that you want to find a painter.  First you have to identify your friends that live in a house, then you have to find someone that had their house painted recently.  The large amount of work that this takes and the low probability of finding someone in your region, makes this a complicated task.

Here is how the problem looks:

 

It is hard to find someone who is not in your immediate network.

Social network sites like LinkedIn and Facebook already provide the foundation to simplify the process of finding a professional service.

Here is how it would work.  Imagine that someone in your network recently hired a painter to paint their house.  This is not something that is normally discussed on the Wall at Facebook or in LinkedIn so you would not know who in your network had the work done.


The only way that you would find out if someone had worked with a painter is if you asked the person in your network directly.

Under the new system, Sam the painter would have a professional profile.  If Susan was happy with Sam’s work then she would provide a professional reference for Sam and add him to her professional services list.  This list would not take up space on Susan’s home page but if someone was looking for a painter, Facebook or LinkedIn would show everyone in their network who had recommended a painter.

 

Professional Services are now easy to find through your network.

The normal fan pages on Facebook would not be appropriate for a roofer since one would not want to get messages from a service that they may never need again in their life.  Similarly, I would not want to add a roofer as a friend because I don’t want to share my daily life with them.  In essence, professional services need a connection that is somewhere between a fan and a friend.

By promoting professional services, Facebook or LinkedIn would make it easier for someone to find a professional service by using their network.  Additionally, Behavioral Science proposes that the quality of the service will also improve because someone who has a large amount of positive references will subconsciously improve the quality of their work to match up with the references.  People who have poor references will not receive new work and will drop out of the network.

Added BonusUsing the above strategy will also increase advertising revenue for Facebook or LinkedIn by using targeted ad placement.  When someone searches for a roofer in their immediate network that person is ready to make an immediate purchase.  No one browses roofers for fun.  When a search is made in the network for roofers, Facebook or other social media sights can also post ads by third party roofers. These are target and timely ads and should command a high premium because of their relevance and timeliness.  The vast majority of advertising done in the Yellow Pages with the exception of restaurants falls into this category.