To find people asking for recommendations online, check the places where neighbors and peers ask each other for help: Reddit, local Facebook groups, neighborhood apps, industry forums and question sites. A fifteen-minute sweep once a day, with a short list of searches saved, catches most of them while they are still fresh.
A recommendation request is the warmest lead there is. The person has a problem, has decided to hire someone, and has asked a crowd for a name. If your name comes up and you respond well, you often win by default. Here is where to look, how to keep it down to fifteen minutes, and how to tell a post worth answering from one to skip. The running example is Teodor, who owns a small pest control company.
Where recommendation questions live
People post these questions in about five kinds of places, and the right mix depends on who your customers are.
City and regional communities on Reddit, where residents post "anyone recommend a pest control company?" Local Facebook groups for towns, neighborhoods, parents and homeowners. Neighborhood apps such as Nextdoor, which has a recommendations feature and business pages. Forums and communities specific to an industry or hobby. And question sites like Quora, where the audience is wider and the question is usually general, though some fit service businesses.
For Teodor, the best place is probably the local Facebook groups, followed by the city subreddit and Nextdoor. For a business that sells to other businesses, the industry forums and Reddit communities for owners and managers carry more weight. Choose the three or four where your customers actually are, not all five.
Reddit and forums
On Reddit, search your city and trade communities for phrases like "recommend", "anyone know a good", "looking for" and "who do you use", sorted by new. Reddit closes threads to new comments after about six months, so ignore old results. How to use Reddit search to find people ready to buy lists the phrases and shows how to narrow them.
On forums, use the site's own search and the "new posts" view. Many forums have a "looking for" or "services wanted" section. Check the forum's rules for business owners, since some require a verified or paid status to reply, and some ban it outright. Search engines can also help: searching for your trade plus your city plus "recommend" with the forum's name often finds threads the forum's own search hides.
Local Facebook groups and neighborhood apps
Facebook groups let you search posts inside a group, and recommendation questions are usually easy to spot. Read each group's rules first, as admins decide what business owners may post. How to find customers in Facebook groups goes into the etiquette.
On a neighborhood app, you can follow recommendation requests in your area, and in some cases businesses can be recommended by neighbors directly. The rules on promotion in these apps are set by the company, and neighbors tend to dislike anything that feels like advertising in a space meant for neighbors. Answering as a person who happens to run the business, with a plain disclosure, goes down better than a polished ad.
Search alerts
You can reduce the manual part with alerts. Google Alerts lets you create an alert for a phrase, such as "recommend pest control" plus your town, and emails you when it finds new web pages that match. It will catch public forum threads and some posts, though it will miss most social posts, which are behind logins. Set it up once and treat it as a supplement.
Some communities offer their own notification options, like following a topic or turning on notifications for new posts in a group. Use them for the one or two places that matter most. Don't turn them on for ten, since the notifications become noise and you stop reading them.
A 15-minute daily sweep
Write the routine down and keep to it. Something like this:
- Minutes 1 to 5: your two best Reddit communities, sorted by new, three saved searches each.
- Minutes 6 to 10: your top Facebook group or two, scrolling the latest posts and using the group search for "recommend" and your trade.
- Minutes 11 to 13: the neighborhood app and your Google Alerts email.
- Minutes 14 to 15: open the two or three posts worth answering and write quick replies, or flag them for later in the day.
If you keep the sweep to fifteen minutes, it survives. If it grows into an hour, it stops happening by week three. Put it next to something you already do, like the first coffee, or the lunch break. Teodor does his between the first and second job.
Which posts are worth answering
Not every request needs a reply from you. Run each post through these checks.
Is it recent, ideally within a day or so? Is it local to your service area? Does it describe a job you do, at a size you take? Is the thread still open, without a clear winner already named? And do the rules allow a business owner to answer? Posts that pass all five are worth your two minutes. Posts that pass three are worth skipping.
A few posts are worth skipping even when they pass: threads that are clearly venting, posts from someone who is known to ask for free work, and anything where the poster wants a free diagnosis for a job they plan to do themselves. Helping them anyway is fine if you have a minute, but don't count it as a lead.
When you reply, say who you are. "I own a small pest control company here, so I'm biased" is enough. Then give a useful answer: what to check, what to ask any company, what a fair range looks like. Don't put a phone number in the reply. If they're interested, they'll find you, or ask. Call your own business before you buy ads is about checking what a customer experiences when they do, and it is worth ten minutes after you answer your first few.
Log and follow up
Keep a simple sheet: date, place, link, what they needed, what you said, and the outcome. Review it twice a week. People often respond a day or two later, and many threads reopen when the first company they called doesn't show up. A second, short note that adds something useful, like a tip about prepping for the visit, is welcome. A pushy nudge is not.
When someone does contact you, answer fast. Leads from a recommendation thread are comparing two or three names, and the first helpful reply tends to win. If you're out on a job, calls are where it breaks. The lead you never followed up is about that exact leak.
Letting something else do the Reddit part
On Reddit, Conversations, inside Rocketship, can run the search for you. It finds Reddit threads where people ask for what you sell, drops the old and closed ones, and drafts a reply and a message in your voice. You read it and post it yourself, from your own Reddit account. It never posts, messages or votes for you. Facebook groups, neighborhood apps and forums remain a manual sweep.
The same Rocketship account does the work after the question: finding business customers by name, emailing from your own Gmail, following up, and answering your calls. Rocketship also works inside Claude through its connector, described on the Claude page.
Rocketship finds the buyers, emails them from your own Gmail, follows up, and books the meeting on its own. Plans that get you customers start at $24.99 a month (Launch), and every monthly plan starts with a 7-day free trial, card required. Answering your existing number is included; a dedicated line is $5 a month. For a local plan with more detail, see getting customers for a local service startup.