Carhartt: Tough Jobs

Carhartt's Tough Jobs blog is a terrific example of a company that leveraged its customers to tell stories about its products in a way that the company itself never could. Many blogs fail to generate enough relevant content to help drive the traffic necessary for any kind of measurable success. But as a result of its UGC blog strategy, Carhartt's blog does not suffer from this problem.

Most user-generated content efforts fail due to a "build-it-and-they-will-come" mentality. The result is usually disappointing volume compounded by the other issue of reviews getting buried deep in the site. For most businesses, prospects only see a review after they have navigated to a specific product.

Carhartt turned this status quo model upside down by soliciting customer feedback and creating a specific landing page for its "Tough Jobs" network of blogs. By asking customers to tell the company about their "tough jobs" and placing that content directly on its blogs, Carhartt puts its happy customers at the front of its online marketing efforts. Furthermore, this extra content drives significantly more search volume, which in turn earns Carhartt more customers... which, in turn, drives more content on Tough Jobs, and so on. In short, you see what makes this a great corporate blogging program.