Martha Stewart knows how to go viral.
For years she's dazzled her fans with photos that offer behind the scenes glimpses of her life. There was that time she rode a hoverboard in Qatar and the day Snoop Dogg stopped by her office.
Now, the 74-year-old homemaker extraordinaire is quietly taking over Facebook Live, the social network's recently launched tool that allows people to livestream just about anything to the online community.
Celebrity accounts could start broadcasting Live videos in August 2015, but Stewart got access to the tool a month early in July, thanks to a connection her director of content marketing for Martha Stewart Living, Marci Greenfield, had at Facebook.
"Martha is an innovator and wants to be able to do things first," Greenfield tells Tech Insider in an interview.
Today, Stewart, who has almost 2 million Facebook followers, often gets over 150,000 views on her Live videos, which is a lot for videos that range in length from 20 minutes to over an hour. That's more views than some episodes of "The Martha Stewart Show" got when it moved to the Hallmark Channel.
As someone whose whole job is understanding how Facebook decides what its users see on their newsfeeds, I can testify that those stats are pretty good for TV segment-length live videos. It's especially impressive when you consider the dwindling attention spans of everyone, especially on a smartphone.
Stewart covers topics across the spectrum of what her fans would want to see from her, like tips on ironing, cooking, and organizing.
When she taught her audience how to bake a rhubarb pie with actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson, that one video got almost 20,000 interactions, breaking her page's record, and nearly 2,000 shares. Worshipful comments include sentiments like, "I love every opportunity to sit at the feet of Martha Stewart" and "I adore Martha Stewart."
"These videos are going to do well because it's so Martha," Greenfield says. "She wants to teach and give out that service."
Greenfield, who you can hear fielding questions from the commenters during all of the live videos, says Stewart was "very insistent that she wanted the user to walk away with something" after watching one of her videos. What makes these videos work so well is how much Stewart actually knows. All of her videos are on topics that she's passionate about, and it comes through.
Watching Stewart's live videos, I learned that baking soda can go bad after a few years (see if it fizzes in water to make sure it's fresh) in one of her baking episodes, and how to find the best asparagus at the store (the tips should still be mostly closed).
Stewart will often field questions from fans, and because one person cannot be expected to know everything, she sometimes doesn't know the answers.
During her recent ironing tips live video, which has over 3,000 likes and nearly 166,000 views, a commenter asked a question Stewart didn't know the answer to, so she went right to a manual to look it up. Of course, she wrote the book on those tips — literally — so don't be surprised if she recommends viewers turn to a book or tool branded with her name on it.
The blend of Stewart's core fans and Facebook's slightly younger audience makes for a unique viewing experience. Her audience is diverse and vocal: Not only have people wished Stewart a "Happy Mother's Day" from Kenya, but some of her videos get incredible engagement — in Facebook terms, the collection of likes/comments/reactions that a video or post can gain.
The fact that people are asking questions in addition to simply liking a video shows that they are using this as an active experience. They are not passively watching these videos fly by their news feed; they want to touch a bit of Stewart's genius.
And the interest seems to be cross generational.
"We've also had people comment to tell us they're watching the Live video in their dorm room while their mother is watching at home," says Greenfield.
A signature of Stewart's Live videos is her candidness. It's a chance for viewers, both long-time fans or new ones, to see the "real Martha," where heavily produced TV content or glossy magazine shoots may not provide that clear picture. She'll joke, she'll order someone around, she'll put people on the spot.
She'll even take time to talk to her turkeys in full gobble, as seen in the last few minutes of this video on her gardening tips.
"Those are the little bits where you're like 'that is TRULY Martha,'" said Greenfield, "which you maybe haven't seen anywhere else."
There's something about Live that feels more intimate and unique than Stewart's previous forays on social media — if you're watching her in real-time, you can see her unfiltered reactions. For someone who seems to present a polished appearance to the world, that's a big deal that really reasonates with fans.
Actually useful tips + real-time conversations with fans + extremely entertaining, off-the-cuff segments = Martha Stewart's formula for Facebook Live success.
Ideas for her Live videos can take anywhere from a month to a few short days to turn around, according to Greenfield. There was a time when Stewart was supposed to go out to her garden for a segment, but it was too windy that day, so they had her simply answer live submitted questions. The video clocks in at over an hour long.
"She can turn anything into gold," Greenfield says.
As Stewart's long-time fans know, that's a good thing.