Life Is Good’s secrets to UGC and positivity on social media
Learn how a brand known for appreciating life’s simple moments works with users to build chill and happy communities across channels.
It’s tough out there for brands.
Many social media spaces are awash with people eager to pick apart creative strategy and call out brands for the slightest missteps, leaving account managers and brand marketers with the task of not just promoting products and services, but cultivating safe and positive spaces for good-faith customer interactions.
Helping out on this front is one of our primary goals at PR Daily’s 2025 Social Media Conference at Disney World, March 19-20, a gathering where social pros can regroup, detox, get creative and find out how to captivate communities, ignite action and fire up reach, results and ROI.
Among the luminaries taking the stage is the jewel in the crown of brand positivity — Life Is Good, which for more than 30 years has been inviting fans to take life a little easier and embrace small moments of joy.
At the conference, Allyson Forstrom, director of social media and community at Life is Good, will join us for a session titled “Peoplemoving: How to Build a Community with the Help of Social Media Socialites & UGC” to explain how the organization’s user-generated content strategy keeps its brand storytelling pitch-perfect, and what we can all learn from these practices.
“Marketing teams should view UGC as a core strategy, not a nice-to-have,” Forstrom said. She says it can turn your community into “active co-creators of your brand story” by humanizing your brand, building credibility and loyalty, and differentiating your brand from competitors.
Community co-creation
Life Is Good’s bright-eyed community of followers and brand ambassadors thrives on creating and sharing content, and not just on social: Forstrom’s team also folds UGC into the brand’s email, websites, catalogs and physical retail spaces.
To inspire UGC, Forstrom suggests making prompts relatable, personal and easy to execute. Its platforms are filled with both in-house and user-generated messaging including positive mantras, expressions of gratitude and moments of peace.
“People share content because it says something about them, not just the brand,” she notes. Life is Good’s approach centers on optimism — their mission — and this focus shapes their campaigns.
During Optimism Month in 2024, Life is Good invited a dozen of its active community members to spread cheer and positivity by handing out flowers to strangers in Boston, an activation that yielded organic content creation as participants shared their experiences.
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Throughout the month, which takes place in March of each year, Life Is Good focuses on spreading mental wellbeing by asking people to chime in with tips for mental wellbeing, positive inspiration and uplifting messages the hashtag #OptimismMonth, all while sharing animations, advice and content series of its own.
“This is the beauty of UGC — it ranges from seeing our T-shirts tagging along on everyday adventures to deeply moving stories about how the brand impacts lives,” Forstrom said.
She says it’s important to make contributors feel seen and appreciated, whether through simple gestures such as likes and comments, or more personalized rewards such as exclusive products or heartfelt thank-you messages.
“When done thoughtfully, UGC builds a sense of belonging and mutual appreciation between a brand and its community,” she said.
Pitch-perfect partnerships
Life is Good’s brand ambassador program — spanning over 600 advocates whom the brand flags with the hashtag #LIGBrandAmbassador across social — share and spread the brand’s values.
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“It’s not only about size of influence but how deeply they align with brand values,” she explains.
Life is Good even got in on the 2024 “Stick of the Year” tournament. The account @officialstickreviews has almost four million followers (#StickNation) across Instagram and TikTok, and it reviews the sticks — yes, the kind you find outside on the ground — that its followers find and show off. Life is Good partnered with the account, creating a custom tee for the discoverer of the winning stick and chiming in with puns (“Life is Wood!”) throughout the tournament.
Measuring the vibes
The team identified the StickNation moment through social listening with its community and used it to shift its gifting and paid strategy as its participation in the tournament generated interest in its line of boxy tees. “We worked with product-focused influencers known for shopping hauls, try-on videos and product recommendations to fuel the conversation,” Forstrom said.
To measure the success of these initiatives, Life is Good doesn’t just focus on sales: “One of the primary indicators of success is the awareness we generate — what we call ‘creating ripples of optimism,’” Forstrom said. “We track the volume of UGC created and its organic reach and engagement, as these metrics directly support our mission to spread optimism. We also evaluate UGC against traditional branded content, especially in channels like paid social advertising. This helps us measure its impact on conversion rates.”
Additionally, sentiment tracking clues the brand in to audience perceptions. “Done successfully, focusing on community content will benefit short- and long-term brand health,” she asserts.
Keep it chill
It’s easy to step off the path or trip on a root during a journey through UGC territory. “One potential pitfall is assuming that a brand fully understands or is automatically welcomed into a space,” Forstrom said. Instead, brands should view themselves as contributors rather than owners of a community.
“True community engagement requires self-awareness and respect,” she said. “A brand’s role should be to listen, learn, and contribute in meaningful ways.”
By asking what specific support or tools a community might need, brands can identify needs and build trust with even the most emotionally vulnerable people without overstepping boundaries.
Life is Good’s perpetual commitment to spread optimism has granted it longevity and the capacity to build genuine connections with users — a strategy many brands might benefit from trying out. Exercising emotional intelligence to position users’ needs and interests at the heart of content creation can help brands turn customers into co-creators and advocates and enjoy lasting, mutually rewarding relationships.
Learn how it’s done: Don’t miss Allyson Forstrom’s talk at PR Daily’s 2025 Social Media Conference at Disney World, March 19-21.
