By: Christina Gaines | @stinaegaines

According to USA Today, both Pinterest and Instagram have doubled in usage over the course of the last three years. However, Pinterest presents a unique treasure trove to marketers - one that allows businesses to initiate a conversation with longer shelf life and leverage interactions with a relatively lower influx of consumer negativity. Not only this, but in the summer of 2015, Pinterest rolled out the highly anticipated buyable pins.

Because of this, it is more vital than ever for your company’s marketers to be social media savants - to understand strategies to optimize your use of the platform, drive traffic, and market efficiently.

Here are some tips on how to navigate Pinterest like a pro:

1. Forget what you’ve heard- although men are the smallest Pinterest demographic, they are the fastest growing. Believe it or not, more men use Pinterest in the U.S. than read Sports Illustrated and GQ combined. Do not miss targeting them.

2. As the Entrepreneur puts it, “Ninety three percent of Pinterest members use Pinterest as their de facto shopping list”. Not using buyable pins would be a digital marketing travesty. However, this doesn’t mean that one size fits all just yet- for now, those retailers already partnered up with Shopify or Demandware will have the upper hand.

3. Facilitating traffic is crucial for more reasons than the obvious. In order for your account to be prioritized via the Pinterest Smart Feed, you must grow your audience (or promote pins). Give in and quench the seemingly insatiable Pinterest content monster - try to pin 15 to 20 high-quality pieces a day.

4. Your boards should be a concoction of things that make up your brand’s personality - remember, social media for business is largely used to give your product a more human face. Use high-resolution, tasteful photographs to create interesting boards. Make sure that they don’t appear to be ads, and that they offer some sort of benefit to the viewer, whether it be useful advice or a discount.

5. Seeing as 80% or more of daily Pinterest traffic comes from mobile phones, be sure to optimize your graphics so that they don’t lose readability when shrunk. Use bullets, bold your font, and avoid script lettering like the plague.

In an interview with ManlyPinterestTips.com founder Jeff Sieh, Social Media Examiner states that “On Pinterest, 40% of the clicks happen the first day, 70% happen the first two days and the remaining 30% of the clicks happen 30 days and beyond.” Having engagement that stretches is huge for you as a marketer. That implies not only creating worthwhile content, but also it being seen - with possibly the help of pin promotion.

However, promoting pins doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg if you’re aware. Here are also some penny-pinching Pinterest techniques sure to keep your limbs intact:

1. Give pinning your campaign a go ahead of time, for if it doesn’t work in Pinterest, it likely won’t perform well in the physical marketplace. (And use tall images - they show up more clearly, more consistently.)

2. Decide whether your objective is to “Boost engagement” or “Get traffic”- it’s under “Promoted Pins” in the “Edit Profile” drop-down menu. To get the most from your promoted pins, I would choose the latter.

3. If you’re on a tight budget, keep the campaign length to a reasonable minimum. It would also be wise to start on a Saturday afternoon or evening, especially if your business is new to the Pinterest game.

4. Keywords get you noticed. Whatever you think your audience would want to look up or read about, include that keyword.

5. Figure out your Cost Per Click (CPC)- what’s the most you’re willing to pay? If you’re looking for simply engagement and repins, then err on the lower end.

One of the remarkable things about Pinterest is that you needn’t spend a fortune to garner lasting engagement- even a small amount of money will go far if you learn to harness the power of the pin. If you make great content and release it wisely, those who repin will create a lovely snowballing effect that means nothing but big green dollar signs for your business.

Good luck pinning!