Many small businesses, such as car washes, are using social media to tell their stories. The problem is that most consumers are so busy telling their own stories on these sites that it’s hard to get a word in edgewise, Anthony Shop, the cofounder and chief strategy officer of Social Driver, said.

Shop’s Washington, D.C.-based digital agency helps clients connect with customers through social media, their own company websites and advertising campaigns. He said that with so much content on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, it’s hard for a small business to stand out unless it pays to promote its content. This is particularly true since recently announced changes to Facebook’s algorithms which reduce the amount of marketing and advertising content in users’ newsfeeds in order to give priority to posts from friends and family.

The trick for small businesses, Shop said, is getting customers to do their social media promotion for them.

“Customers are creating their own real-time autobiographies, so they are not necessarily interested in what companies’ stories are,” Shop said. “That means we have to change the way we market. We have to ask the question: How can I get to be a character in my customers’ stories? What am I doing to be worthy of that?”

Shop pointed to a recent example in his own life. After a back injury, he went to a massage parlor that offered customers a $10 discount if they “checked into” the massage parlor on Facebook, letting their friends know they had been there. It then occurred to him that the reason he had selected that particular massage parlor was because one of his friends had checked into it on Facebook, and Shop had seen that in his newsfeed.

“What that massage parlor recognized was that it was less about what it posted on its own social media account — that really was not what mattered — it was how do I get my customers to talk about me on their accounts? That was their goal,” Shop said. “It showed the power of giving someone an incentive and encouraging them to include you in their story. People are more likely to notice something that comes from their friends, and they’re also more likely to trust and believe things that come from their friends. It matters a lot more what other people say about you than what you say about yourself.”

Shop noticed a similarly effective strategy at a friend’s car dealership, where it was common practice for a salesman to snap a picture of the customer jumping for joy next to his new car, with the dealership’s sign prominently displayed in the background. The dealership often would post these pictures on its Facebook page or website, but it wasn’t done there. The salesman would offer to use the customer’s phone to take a second picture.

“Now that that picture is on their phone, what do they do?” Shop said. “They share it.”

While it’s preferable to have customers selling your car wash to their friends, it’s also important for a car wash to sell itself. According to the International Carwash Association’s 2016 U.S. Consumer Study, only 11 percent of consumers received an online advertising message or offer from a car wash that year. And among those who did receive one, most cited an email from the car wash as the method of communication, illustrating that many car washes aren’t taking full advantage of social media. Even a simple tweet pointing out that the weather is right for a car wash or that there are no cars in the queue might be enough to bring in a customer or two.

Melanie Ohlinger, marketing specialist for Washworld, said the car wash equipment manufacturer primarily uses Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to promote the company and its distributors. But as social media users see less advertiser content, it means car wash operators can’t rely solely on the world’s most popular social media site.

“You have to pay quite a lot to get seen [on Facebook],” she said. “I encourage distributors to set up a Facebook account in order to use it in the same way that you use the yellow pages — to have your phone number, address and things like that available — but I don’t really focus on engagement when it comes to Facebook anymore because the way their algorithms have changed, it’s really hard for a business to build an audience on there.”

Ohlinger offered several rules of thumb for carwashes looking to increase their social-media presence:

• Have a nice digital logo, and use it often to build your brand.

• Be mindful of employees’ security by asking them if you can take and post photos, refraining from using their last names in posts and using a nickname to refer to employees with unique first names. Do not “tag” employees in posts. Instead, give them the option of tagging themselves.

• Be liberal with the “like” button. “If you act too preciously with whom you like, it can really restrict the reach of your account, and then you’ll be missing out on opportunities,” Ohlinger said. “I think that’s something people are really surprised by. We like everyone back who likes us unless it’s very obviously a spam account, and we like our competitors because if we don’t, we don’t have access to their customers. Plus, it helps us to see what others in the industry are doing online.”

• Schedule posts in advance so that you won’t forget to post during busy times at your business, and always be on the lookout for post-worthy content, even if you don’t plan to use it right away.

In order to develop an effective social media strategy, companies have to obtain “audience intelligence,” or information about their customers’ online habits. Here are five key things to consider, according to Anthony Shop, the cofounder and chief strategy officer of Social Driver.