The following is a guest post by Future Buzz community memeber Matt Gratt.

While many people see Martha Stewart as just another craft and cooking show host, she’s actually a brilliant marketer, founder, and executive. She’s in an exclusive club: not too many people found a company and manage to take it public while staying CEO, putting her in the company of entrepreneurs like Michael Dell, Steve Jobs, Marc Benioff, and Howard Schultz.

This success is not unwarranted.  In addition to being a gifted maker, Martha is a brilliant marketer. The company name alone – Martha Stewart OmniMedia – suggests a certain ambition beyond individual channels, aiming for a place in customer’s lives, rather than a certain book, website, magazine or television show.

In this interview with Chris Anderson at the Wired Business Conference, Martha Stewart talks about her approach to technology and how her business adapts to the ever changing digital world. You’ll also notice that she’s deeply knowledgeable about new technology, tries everything manufacturers send her, and is truly committed to embracing what’s new.

1. Follow Customers – Not Technology Religion

“You have to be where the customer is. And that’s been another very important part of our business – try to be where the customer needs you and wants you… Always try to satisfy the customer.”

Technology will change. People will go from desktop internet, to mobile apps, to tablet apps, to HTML5/CSS3 web apps, to whatever comes next. And rather than betting on technology, smart marketers should figure out how to deliver a value proposition to their audience across these technologies.

As Cisco says in their Approach to Quality, “No Technology Religion: Because customer satisfaction is our number one priority, Cisco employees are to actively listen, share and explore to ensure we provide the best solutions to meet our customers’ needs.”

2. Tap the Innovation of the Crowd

“We use a lot of Etsy contributors on our show. We go there when we’re looking for a crafter that makes crepe-paper flowers, for example. We go to Etsy and try to find the best.”

Martha Stewart’s team finds the most talented makers on Etsy and crafts with them. Why don’t marketers find the most talented content creators amongst their ecosystem and empower them with recognition and a distribution platform? Or better yet, hire them?

3. Hire People That Would Do Their Job for Free

“Everyone that works at the company is really a do-it-yourselfer.”

If you can, hire people that do their job (or activities related to their job) in their spare time. While it’s easier to find people that are enthusiastic about crafting or cooking than say, enterprise software, everyone can look for the same function-related or industry-related traits.

Do your online marketing managers have a blog or test sites? Do your engineers have github repos or side projects? Do your designers sell their work on ThemeForest? Are your sales people intensely competitive social butterflies? Does your office manager re-organize his or her closet for fun?

It’s too hard to get people excited about a job. Find people who are already excited, and convince them to join you.

4. Use Content Marketing to Build Trust

“We have the magazine – we show how to make the perfect omelet in the magazine. Then on TV, I can also show how to make the perfect omelet. Then we have the video. Then people trust us because our recipes work so well, they also want to have the omelet pan I was using. So why not make the omelet pan? So we design the omelet pan and find the retailer that wants to sell our product.”

While there are at least three great marketing lessons in that quote, let’s focus on the content marketing aspect of Martha Stewart Omnimedia. After they’ve established trust with consumers – by providing written recipes, instructional videos, and other forms of content around the problem they face – they provide an excellent tool.

And perhaps even better, MSO captures a great deal of the margin by partnering for manufacturing and distribution.

5. If Your Content Gets a Positive Response, Go With It

“We have some amazing craft segments on our show which then morph into templates for our website, which morph into instructions on our craft blog, which morph into, ultimately, sometimes products.”

Martha and her team follow their audience – if they see a television segment getting a response, they’ll create templates and instructions for that project. Now their audience can engage even more deeply with their brand and programming – not just enjoying the TV show, but doing the activities in their home.

6. Follow the Law. Closely.

“It didn’t work to go to jail.”

Follow the law to the very best of your ability. This means not just avoiding insider trading, but ensuring compliance with FTC guidelines, getting proper clearance on all of your images, and, yes, going through legal. This also means doing your best to follow the rules of your vendors and partners – it’s not glamorous to get banned from Google, Facebook, or Craigslist either.

7. Invest in the Future

You must invest in the future if you are going to be in the future. That’s very important for all companies to pay attention to. You’re not going to retain your employees if you’re not investing in the future.

Digital marketing today is simply so competitive, if you’re not growing your reach, traffic, and revenue, it’s shrinking. You can invest in the future, or you can be irrelevant. Fortunately, the choice is yours.

Matt Gratt is an online marketing consultant focused on B2B software and web companies. Follow him on Twitter @MattGratt. He also writes about marketing, technology, and business on his blog Grattisfaction.

7 Lessons Digital Marketers Can Learn from Martha Stewart is from The Future Buzz, a Blog Covering Digital Marketing

Thought I’d share 3 stories that stand out (2 recent, one from a bit ago) to inspire you to go beyond a resume next time you’re seeking a job.

1. Jeanne Hwang creatively uses the platform she wants to work for

The Next Web shares the story that Jeanne put together a visual resume on Pinterest. I won’t comment on her pins about increasing Twitter followers and her Klout Score (you guys know how I feel about those items - share outcomes, not KPIs). But the concept itself is clever and anyone looking to work for a specific platform should follow Jeanne’s example of demonstrating fluency in it.

2. Bennett Olson buys billboard time that points to his domain

MSNBC shares the story that Bennett paid $300 for an 8-second time slot on an electronic billboard near downtown Minneapolis. The ad was live for 24 hours, in the mix with other ads on the billboard. The billboard appears above and is simple in execution but smart for someone seeking a local position (although perhaps he could have quickly qualified what type of job he was seeking). He has since taken a job in sales and marketing at Laser Design & GKS Services, a 3D scanning company in Bloomington.

3. Alec Brownstein uses AdWords to land dream job

The YouTube video Alec created really explains it best:

According to Mashable, Alec paid a total of $6 to run ads against ego searches of target executives. Not only was this cost effective, it showed off his technology-savvy / understanding of his audience. That he packaged it up into a video that resulted in significant press was a nice bonus.

Of course, while these are all great ways to get noticed, you also need to have the qualifications to back up your creativity. But if you’re facing heavy competition, an idea like the above to stand out and open a discussion is smart.

3 Creative Professionals Who Went Beyond The Resume is from The Future Buzz, a Blog Covering Digital Marketing

The web has always enjoyed talking about, well, the web. That’s nothing new. It was true in the days of forums and boards, in fact some of the most heated threads stemmed from meta discussions.

Back when Digg was popular the most popular submissions on Digg were about Digg. This is true on Reddit today. Several of the blogs about blogging still receive a huge amount of attention.

So I especially enjoyed that the New Yorker published a humorous story on the web’s continued obsession with meta threads in today’s social platforms:

First, I take a sort of new angle on Facebook, which means you’ll post me on Facebook. My second half concerns itself with Twitter, so you’re powerless not to retweet me, perhaps with a pithy comment before the retweet, like “Long but worth checking out.” And I throw in a nod to Google+ or Circles or whatever the hell it’s called, which means I’ll be Added or Encircled or something. There’s nothing pandering about me whatsoever!

You see, all I need to do is be self-referentially about the technology you all use and I’ll replicate like the virus in “Contagion,” a movie that, if any of you saw it, will inspire you to now post me to the “Contagion” Facebook page. Look: “The Hunger Games,” “The Smurfs,” “ ‘The Smurfs’ Meets ‘Shame.’ ” This is too easy.

The whole story is worth reading for a laugh. Although the best part is this is the web most of us have known for well over a decade. In this case, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The Meta Factor Is Still Alive And Kicking is from The Future Buzz, a Blog Covering Digital Marketing

I recall a situation in 2007 (while in the consulting space) when most businesses were barely scratching the surface with digital marketing. The story goes like this: one of my clients, a national brand that is a household name was reticent to participate in social.

What was interesting is very smart people were running the company. But even after we explained the situation, shared research and outlined the benefits of embracing social marketing, they still seemed ambivalent. Or perhaps a better word: dismissive. “Why would anyone want to do that?” was a common response to what we showed people (specifically their fans) were doing. Even when endorsements, reactions and demand for social participation was right in their faces, they ignored it.

They dismissed the idea that the world was changing: either out of fear that marketing had passed them by or that their previous years of success were in jeopardy. Maybe easier to ignore the change going on around them than embrace it.

Of course, they changed their tune eventually. This massive brand is now one of the most successful consumer brands on social. They have 7-figure followings on most of their channels (trending to 8). They actively engage their communities, have a thriving social CRM program, deftly execute social promotions and tap their fans for content. It’s wonderful to watch and to someone on the outside, it seems organic. Like those operating the brand knew well enough to participate in social. They didn’t. Not without much persuasion, presentations and hand-holding.

It could have been so much easier. They could have been curious and started sooner (the reality is we began the process in 2006, it took a lot of work on our part). Many cycles wasted by fighting the future, they could be so much further ahead. I had a conversation with an executive from this brand years after who asked why they didn’t see it sooner. But I think they did see it, they just weren’t ready to accept the shift and were part of a culture that was change-averse.

The lesson? Be curious, not dismissive. Experiment. Try things and iterate. It is such a better mindset and leads to so many more possibilities than being closed off. The world is changing faster than ever and you need to be ready to change with it.

Image via 50 viral images

Be Curious, Not Dismissive is from The Future Buzz, a Blog Covering Digital Marketing

This week, I traveled to LA to speak on a panel with Sonia Simone and Peter Shankman (pictured above) at the BlueGlass internet marketing conference. Our session was on the future of public relations – you can read a summary here.

I wanted to bring up one part of our discussion that was particularly interesting and something I’ve been thinking about lately. We got on the subject of creativity as an audience member asked the question how to consistently come up with creative ideas. Peter and Sonia responded with some good tips on how to come up with something creative, fast.

For example, Peter noted to do something active / get exercise in order to get ideas flowing. I think this is great advice, in fact it was one of the ideas I wrote down in a post on how to overcome writer’s block.

But I’ve been thinking about this further and while this type of activity might help for someone who is already creative, I am not sure this would actually help someone who isn’t creative in the first place as they’ve never developed that part of themselves.

After all, if we are the sum of our experiences and you don’t nurture an existence that is unique and creative (i.e., if you spend all your time watching TV, blindly following rules all day or being closed off to new experiences) you’re not really positioned to make anything different because you’re not primed for it. Even if you give your brain optimal conditions by being healthy or getting your blood moving through exercise.

It’s up to us to live a life conducive of creativity to the point our experiences produce it as an organic output. And in a world where we’re giving rise to the creative class, it’s one of the most valuable things you can do.

On Being Creative is from The Future Buzz, a Blog Covering Digital Marketing