Homeowners vet contractors on their phone

Do homeowners check contractors on Instagram?

Yes, and in numbers that would have sounded strange five years ago. SociallyIn's 2026 research found 34% of consumers use Instagram to discover and vet neighborhood contractors, and 23% use TikTok.

58%

of US adults aged 30 to 49 visit Facebook every day

Say you do kitchens in McKinney. A homeowner gets your name at a Saturday cookout, and Sunday night on the couch she types it into her phone. Google first: 41 reviews, newest one from March.

Then Facebook, where the last post is a Christmas photo. Then Instagram, nine posts, all from the year you opened. She never gets to the website you paid $6,000 for.

Facebook is bigger than both for the person who owns the house. Pew Research Center puts 71% of US adults on Facebook, and 58% of adults aged 30 to 49 visit it daily.

BrightLocal's 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey ranks Facebook second only to Google as a place people check reviews, and names YouTube, Instagram and TikTok as growing sources for video recommendations.

The homeowner walks four steps on a phone before the call, and the website is the last one

It starts with a name and ends with a call, and every step happens on a phone.

What does the homeowner's check look like, step by step?

It starts with a name and ends with a call, and every step happens on a phone.

First comes the name. Roofing Contractor magazine's 2026 homeowner study found 74% of homeowners find a roofer through word of mouth, and 50% through search engines. Either way, the homeowner now has a business name and a phone in hand.

Google is step two. BrightLocal found 97% of consumers read reviews for local businesses, 41% always do, and 71% check them on Google. They read the count, the rating and the date on the newest review. Mostly the date.

Then the social check. This is where the 34% on Instagram and 23% on TikTok show up, along with the Facebook page most homeowners still open first. They're looking for one thing: does this crew look real and recent.

Step four is the website and the call. BrightLocal found 54% of consumers visit the business's website after reading a positive review, and of those, 34% are ready to buy while 66% keep researching. The website closes. It doesn't open.

We argued internally about whether the website even earns a step on that chart. It stayed, since 54% isn't nothing, but nobody on the team fought very hard for it.

What does a dead social page tell a homeowner?

That you might not be around anymore. The review data shows how fast trust decays: BrightLocal found 74% of consumers put the most weight on reviews from the last three months, and 32% want a review from the last two weeks, up from 20% a year earlier.

Two weeks. That bar moves every year and it only moves in one direction.

There's no survey line for social pages yet, so take this as WorkBrag's reading rather than a measured figure: a Facebook page whose last post is a holiday greeting from two years ago reads like a shop that stopped answering the phone.

And a flat opinion to go with it: most contractor websites are overbuilt and most contractor Facebook pages are starved. The $6,000 went to the wrong screen.

Fake proof cuts the other way. A 2026 compilation by Testimonial Star estimates roughly 30% of online reviews are fake, which is why a real homeowner on camera at their own front door carries weight a text block cannot. The same compilation reports 88% of people trust a video testimonial as much as a personal recommendation.

What this means for a remodeler

Check your own name the way a homeowner would. Pick up your phone, search the business, tap the Google reviews, then open Facebook and Instagram. Note the date on the newest thing in each place.

Fix the dates before the design. A current post beats a pretty page. Aim for a new review every week or two and a new job post at least as often.

Get the customer on camera at the final walkthrough. Kitchens and baths photograph well, but the homeowner saying the crew was clean and on schedule is the clip that survives step three. This is the job WorkBrag does for you: one text after the job, the review and the video come back and the clip is posted for you.

BrightLocal found 80% of consumers are more likely to use a business that responds to all its reviews, and 50% view templated responses negatively. So reply to every review in your own words, and name the job while you're at it.

Methodology

Third-party figures come from SociallyIn's 2026 contractor social research, Pew Research Center, BrightLocal's 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey, Roofing Contractor magazine's 2026 homeowner journey report with Owens Corning and myClearInsights, and a 2026 compilation by Testimonial Star.

The four-step path in the chart is WorkBrag's reading that arranges those published figures in the order homeowners describe, not a tracked funnel.

Figures marked as WorkBrag modeled estimates are projections built from those public benchmarks and our own launch assumptions, not measured results. We will replace them with measured data from live accounts and update this page.

Frequently asked questions

Do homeowners check contractors on Instagram?

Yes. SociallyIn's 2026 research found 34% of consumers use Instagram and 23% use TikTok to discover and vet neighborhood contractors, and BrightLocal found consumers check about six review sources before choosing.

Does a contractor need a website if homeowners check social first?

Yes, but it does the last job, not the first. BrightLocal found 54% of consumers visit the business website after reading a positive review, so the site converts a homeowner who has already been convinced by the reviews and the social page.

How often should a contractor post on Facebook and Instagram?

Often enough that the newest post is from this month. Homeowners weight recency heavily, with 74% caring most about reviews from the last three months, and a page that looks abandoned raises the same doubt.

---