Every person I know is addicted to some form of social media. Whether it’s Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest or Twitter – there are legions of followers and members who spend hours of their lives interacting with online media. For me, my addiction is to Pinterest.

Since I joined its exclusive, invite-only beta phase in its early stages a few years ago, I have “pinned” over 5,000 things, and am curating several “boards” of things that inspire me. Everything from fashionable items I know I’ll never afford, to esoteric and beautiful parts of the world I may never have a chance to visit are splattered across its grid-like pages. I joke with my coworkers at CAKE that my ideal world exists in my Pinterest boards. I am completely engaged, love looking at content, and through pinning away, I discover new things that I never realized I wanted to have.

The Reality of Retail.

Pinterest is the beginning of a future of fashion retail very different from that of traditional E-Commerce or brick and mortar stores. According to TechCrunch, “Pinterest has found an optimal balance between aspirational browsing and shopping. Social shopping is more about discovery; conversations and relationship building, something that’s apparent in the way Pinterest users interact.”

This changes retail because the “discovery” phase occurs online, rather than in stores or curated catalogues. For example, let’s imagine I pin a beautiful tortoiseshell watch on my “Jewelry” board. The next week, I pin a different photo of the same watch. Suddenly, I feel like I am seeing tortoiseshell watches all over Pinterest, and all over the Internet. My friends see me pinning these watches, and “repin” my pins. (Yes, I know, the Pinterest lingo is confusing at first.)

All this pinning eventually ends with myself and several other friends all buying watches, maybe a month later. We didn’t discover the watches while looking at our nearest Nordstrom. We discovered something we wanted on the Internet, and from there we could choose whether to find the item in a physical store, or on an E-Commerce site. The power is put in the hands of the pinner herself, rather than the advertiser.

Content Matters.

On Pinterest, content is king. Because of this, the bar for E-Commerce retailers will keep on rising. E-tailers cannot get away with basic pictures of their clothing online anymore. Highly curated, beautiful spreads of retail items are fast becoming the norm. When I pin things, I want to pin a picture that is beautiful, not just a picture of a thing that I want to buy. It’s much more fun to pin a photo of a model reaching into her Céline purse on a busy NYC street than it is to simply pin a stock photo of the same purse.

I’m more likely to buy something, as a consumer, if the first impression I have of it is a beautiful picture. If I just see a boring picture of a shirt on a white background, I’m probably not going to buy that shirt. If I see a pretty picture of that same shirt being worn in a more realistic setting, I’ll automatically be more attracted to it. Visually appealing content is the key.

Maximize Your Brand's Power.

So, let’s say you are a big retailer. You’re already on Twitter, you’ve got a Facebook page, and you’re working on curating free advertising through Instagram. Your marketing department might feel that they have social media down pat, but they’re not even close. As a retailer, it is essential to leverage your brand by building its image through pictures, not words.

Yes, it matters to have a Twitter feed, and interact directly with your consumers through social media. This is a tried and true way to build your brand, but I don’t think it works as well as many people would like to believe. People like to look at pictures, especially pictures of other people. Yes, you can post pictures on Facebook, or tweet images of your new content, but it’s much more effective to leverage your content on a site that lives and breathes for beautiful content, a site like Pinterest.

When in doubt, ask yourself: “If I was an individual in our target market, would I “pin” this image?” If yes, post it. If no, you might want to rethink your strategy.