Last month Pinterest extended its Promoted Pins beta to more businesses in the United States, ramping up advertising options to rival those found on competing social networks like Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. How does a business go about setting up a Promoted Pins campaign, and how does it compare to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram ads?

Advertising on social media is cost-effective, immediately available to a wide range of consumers and usually spreads quickly. But how can you leverage these networks for your best success?

Promoted Pins

Promoted Pins are a way for brands to better advertise their products or services. It was launched as a beta program about eight months ago and last January 1st, the feature was rolled out to more businesses in the U.S.

It’s quite easy to use. You just need to pick a Pin you want to promote, set a budget and how the number of days you want to run the promotional campaign. After Pinterest approves the campaign, you’ll have access to metrics regarding the campaign’s performance. The best part about Promoted Pins is that you don’t get charged unless you get clicks on your site. This is a great way for startups to be able to advertise themselves without having to spend too much.

Those who participated in the beta version of Promoted Pins reported ‘re-pins’ or shares 11 times per advertisement.  Also, some reported that even after the campaign ended the Promoted Pins were still effective in driving traffic to their site, with brands seeing an extra five percent bump in earned media a month following their campaign.

Promoted Pins are not available for everyone yet, but that doesn’t mean you can’t utilize Pinterest to promote your brand. Also, other social media sites offer something similar to Promoted Pins to help brands promote themselves, but are these as effective as Pinterest?

Promoted Pins vs. other social media marketing tools

Facebook Boost Your Post

Boost Your Post is a way for your Facebook posts more visible to other users. You can boost anything you have shared on your News Feed or Timeline or Page, including status updates, photos, videos and offers that were created after June 21, 2012.

To boost a post, all you need to do is go to a post you shared then click Boost Post in the lower left corner. Choose your target audience or the people who you want to see you post, choose your budget based on how many people you want your post to reach, and how long you want the boost to run. To finalize everything, click Boost Post.

The cost of boosting a post depends on your audience reach and how long you want to run your boost, but it can cost as little as $1. Boosted posts appear higher on your audience’s News Feed, which means more people can see it, and the more likely users are to engage with your post.

One Facebook Booster shared his success with this marketing tool. Scott Ayres has a bounce-house business, which he advertises on Facebook. He spends about $50 per month to advertise on Facebook, with $20 dedicated to to the ‘Boost Your Post’ feature. With only $20, he was able to reach 4,590 people on Facebook, amassed 114 photo clicks for the giant water slide he was promoting, gained 22 new page likes, 71 post likes, 13 comments and 7 shares. Ayres’ audience for the specific giant water slide was “Fans and Friends of Fans” to ensure that he is reaching more people. Before the post was boosted, organic reach of the post was only at 67 — after boosting it, the post reached 203. His slide was for rent at $300 and because of the $20 he spent on Boost Your Post, the slide was reserved eight times, earning him $2,400.

If you’re wondering why you should advertise on Facebook, here are some numbers to consider: Facebook has an average of one billion monthly active users who spend about six hours and thirty-five minutes on the platform; it helps you target the desired audience based on the interest of its users; Last year, about $234 million dollars worth of virtual goods and gifts on Facebook. Which means Facebook users are willing to spend on things they see on Facebook. There are now over 30 million businesses on Facebook with 19 million of them with optimized Facebook Pages for mobile and are now spending more money to advertise on the platform to leverage its large user base.

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Promoted Tweets

Twitter’s Promoted Tweets are like regular tweets, but are paid for by advertisers or brands to reach more people. These tweets appear on top or relevant search result pages on Twitter and Search Results for Promoted Trends. These premium tweets can be pinned on enhanced Twitter pages, on Official Twitter clients such as TweetDeck, Twitter for iPhone, and Twitter for Android, and some third-party Twitter clients.

You can use promotions to target by keywords, interests, gender, geography, device used, or similarity to existing followers. Twitter also offers analytics so you can easily see how your Promoted Tweets are reaching your target audience.

To use Promoted Tweets, you need to answer some questions that will give Twitter information about your business. You can then set a daily budget for your campaign. Once the your budget runs out, your campaign will automatically end. One thing you should know about Promoted Tweets is that its pricing system is based on bidding, but Twitter will give you suggestions for what you should bid to optimize your campaign.

On the average, a Promoted Tweet costs somewhere between $.50 – $2.00 when people engage your tweet, or depending on your target audience. Local campaigns average at $1.35 per engagement, or when someone clicks on your promoted tweet, replies, retweets or favorites your promoted tweet. Also, Twitter has announced that Promoted Tweets can now reach more users via its partnership with Flipboard and Yahoo! Japan to syndicate them. This means brands running Promoted Tweets on Twitter can have the same promotion appear on the Flipboard and Yahoo! Japan apps.

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Instagram’s Sponsored Photos and Videos

Photo-sharing is one of the most effective ways to capture an audience through social media, so it’s only natural for brands to seek out Instagram as a media platform. Instagram has a Sponsored Posts program for advertisers, but unlike Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter, not everyone can use it as only brands with established followers, meaning only brands with hundreds of thousands of followers, can utilize these Sponsored Posts. According to Instagram, this screening processes was put in place so as to prevent spammy or fake Instagram accounts from reaching more people. Sponsored posts are easily identifiable as they bear a blue Sponsored Label.

If you’re still curious as to how much advertising on Instagram costs and why only a few brands are sponsoring on the photo-sharing app, it’s simply because of the high price. According to reports, advertising on Instagram for a month could range between $500,000 to $1,000,000. The cost is based on the gender and age of the audience, reach and frequency.

One of the most notable Sponsored Post is the first, which came from fashion designer Michael Kors. Organic posts from Kors only reached its followers and some outside its pre-existing audience when posts are shared by followers. Leveraging the Sponsored Post, Kors saw a 370 percent increase in likes within 18 hours of the campaign launch. This was four times the engagement Kors was used to seeing. Kors’ Instagram page also added 33,000 new followers or 16 times more than usual. And even after the campaign, Kors’ page continued to see increasing user engagement.

Though Sponsored Posts can be quite expensive, you can still utilize Instagram’s social reach to promote your business for free. You can do this by simply sharing work-related photos such as your products and employees, or host a photo campaign to increase followers while making sure to follow Instagram’s PR Guideline.