Duolingo’s unique approach to marketing has played a pivotal role in skyrocketing its success. Starting out as merely a language learning app with virtually no social media presence transformed into a cultural phenomenon gaining a massive following.
Since 2021, Duolingo has achieved remarkable prominence in the realm of social media, capturing the hearts of millions worldwide by posting creative, engaging, and playful content.
Doulingo’s innovative use of social media has not only boosted its brand visibility but has also set the standard for businesses alike desiring successful outcomes in their own brands. By utilizing similar strategies, small businesses can leverage their content and position themselves for consistent monetization.
Today we’re looking at how Zaria Parvez, the brains behind Duolingo’s social media campaign, has managed to grow Duolingo’s brand presence rapidly on social media. We’ll use her own words from YouTube, and online interviews, and explain what she means along the way.
The Brain – Zaria Parvez
Duolingo’s success is largely driven by its social media manager, Zaria Parvez, the owl behind Duolingo. She is the mastermind behind the account’s creative content. While attending the University of Oregon, she studied media planning and strategy, but her heart was in social media.
Summer during her junior year of college, she interned with an advertising agency in New York. However, she ended up not enjoying city life and was on the lookout for something less hype. In fact, Parvez was in search of somewhere low-key and diverse. The Douligo headquarters in Pittsburg ended up being the perfect fit!
Zariah said: “I basically wanted to be somewhere low-key, and Pittsburgh is super low-key.” (Baja, 2023)
Duolingo, founded by two immigrants with a mission to make education accessible for everyone, appealed to her most. Thus, after the interview, she landed a social media coordinator position at Duolingo, and from there, the company skyrocketed with success.
According to Gianna, “The 24-year-old has grown the account’s following from 50,000 users to a whopping 4 million, which she said helped her earn a promotion less than two years after joining the company” . (Gianna, 2022)
By taking risks and some unique approaches, Zaria has gained a national spotlight due to the substantial impact and growth she has led in the company. She is widely recognized and admired by many aspiring marketers and social media managers. Small businesses can model and plan how they produce social media by implementing these strategies.
If you’re aiming to enhance your business’s online presence, the following steps are how Duolingo made that happen:
A Noteworthy Logo
Duolingo is a giant bright green owl. Because of this, he stands out among other logos and brands. This distinctive mascot is an attention grabber. His bright colors and cuteness make the brand’s posts visually attractive and instantly recognizable.
When designing your logo, get creative. What will make people stop and think, ‘That’s cute’ or ‘That certainly stands out from the crowd!’ Make sure it is something that is memorable and sets you apart from your competitors.
Hiring Junior Talent
Zaria claims her success was largely driven by the fact that she approached advertising without much prior knowledge. She was a new grad with a fresh set of eyes on Duolingo. Zaria claims, “There’s something about not really understanding advertising that leads to making great advertising. I want the youngest people who have no idea what they’re doing but just care in some shape or form”. (Baja, 2023)
Without being constrained by traditional marketing strategies being taught in universities or gained through experience in industries, newcomers are challenged to hone their ingenuity and creativity, which make for unique and compelling campaigns that stand out in today’s crowded market.
Doulingo’s hiring team isn’t interested in what degree you have, your background, or experience rather, they are looking for those who are creative and can make something out of nothing. “When we are hiring for our teams, I don’t really care about your advertising experience, I don’t really care about what agencies you have worked with, I care about if I give you a concept, can you find a trending auto, bring it together and have a good caption copy and have a little text on video that is entertaining”. (YouTube, 2023)
Know Your Competitors
For Duolingo, their competitors are not Babble or Rosetta Stone but big-name social media outlets like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. Customers spend their precious time on these apps, which distracts them from daily language lessons.
Zaria: “So how do we use that to our advantage? How do we bring the daily lesson or the push notification to TikTok and bring people back to us?”. (YouTube, 2023)
These are all great questions to be cautiously aware of when building a business. Understanding your competitive landscape, even if it’s not specifically within your market, will have an overall impact, strengthening your brand presence and generating more leads.
“TikTok announced it had reached 1 billion monthly active users, so the platform was really top of mind for me. The challenge I posed myself was, ‘If these people are on TikTok, They’re not using our app. So, how do we get them to come over?”. (Baja, 2023)
In order to be competitive in today’s market, businesses must be experts in compelling content, think outside the box, and utilize social outlets to their advantage. Having a creative backbone that can rise above any hard hit like a recession would be very valuable to every small business.
Commenting Engagement
An audience-centric approach sparked the traction, putting the brand in the spotlight. Doulingo’s growing popularity is largely attributed to its practice of commenting on trending posts from other profiles. Its comments are witty, sarcastic, and even push the boundaries. Thus, accumulating many likes and follows prompted people to install the app.
Zaria said, “Our first success wasn’t actually creating video content, as I didn’t think I had the skillset for that – it was from commenting on other people’s videos. Those comments ended up becoming almost like the new push notification for Duolingo. Everyone started seeing Duo pop up everywhere”. (Baja, 2023)
By regularly engaging with their audience in the comment section, Duolingo consistently drives a high volume of traffic to their page, growing their following.
Content for Connection | Mission Drive
Not every piece of content has to trace back to your mission. The aim is to produce relatable and enjoyable content so the audience will be persuaded to hit the follow button, which will eventually funnel them into downloading the app.
Interviewer: “Does every video need to tie back to knowing that Duo is a learning app?”
Zaria: “It doesn’t. That is what we are learning. People don’t come to social media to learn a language, and very few people actually care about our app when they are on social media.
People are going to social for a break or entertainment, so we need to grab them and meet them where they are”. (YouTube, 2023)
There are easy ways to incorporate the mission into content, but it’s not necessary to include it in every post. Small takeaways and hints do the job, whether in the written caption, hashtags, or video text copy. You can decipher how many posts you want to include your mission and how many should simply entertain.
Zaria: “The mission is to make language accessible to everyone. I am going to do that by having an owl twerk on a table, Steve is going to do that by wearing a wig and pretending to get in a fight with Duo, and engineers are going to do that by making the app better. We all have our own little ways, and I think that intrinsic drive to actually bring new users here because of our mission is what fuels all of the creativity and excitement.”. (YouTube, 2023)
It’s okay to include both: create content that will motivate people to do their lesson and content that will make people laugh.
Unhinged Content
Taking risks is what made Duolingo stand out on large social platforms with millions of users.
“Duolingo’s TikTok account has accumulated 8.2 million followers in just two years”.
How is this substantial growth in such a short time even possible? Mainly by its use of unhinged content. This ‘unhinged’ content refers to taking risks, troublemaking, and pushing the boundaries.
Zaria: “When we first started our account, we were building content; a big question that we had was if we are doing silly stuff like Duo crushing over Dua Lipa, how are people going to know we are an effective language app? They are going to think we are silly and that we aren’t ethical. And I think for me, always the response was we are able to be silly”. (YouTube, 2023)
In the corporate world, people often think in very black-and-white terms, rarely breaking the rules or stepping outside the lines. However, this unconventional approach is the norm for Duolingo, and it has led to significant success by capturing the attention of millions.
Zaria: “So, in some of the storylines, Duo and Steve, our general counselor, are always beefing. In others, Duo loves Duo Lipa, and then we have storylines about this emo girl named Lily who hates Duo but is somehow always roped into Duo’s shenanigans. Our audience loves watching and getting lore from it all”. (YouTube, 2023)
Zaria: “Troublemakers are the ones that are causing seismic cultural shifts; I believe that because they are the ones to press the red button when most of us are too scared to press it ourselves. You need people who are willing to keep pushing the boundaries. I get in trouble, and I get messages from CEOs, and I get into little thorny situations at work; it happens, but also great work comes from it, so I think it’s what you choose to do with that.” (YouTube, 2023)
By breaking away from conventional norms and taking the risk to incorporate unhinged content, you will create memorable experiences and greater bonds that stand out in a crowded market. It will amplify your reach organically and will attract a more diverse customer base.
Being Scrappy
Zaria: “You can’t plan virality. But you can plan mentality. Our openness to being scrappy and experimenting is what has set us apart”. (Baja, 2023)
What can you do with what you already have? This is your opportunity to leverage your existing resources to produce something yielding significant returns for your business. If you are a small start-up business, your budget may be tight at the moment. You may not have the extra funds to spend on advertising. This is opportunity to use your hindrances to your advantage by utilizing the time that would have otherwise been spent on advertising. Thus, alleviating financial burdens in the future.
Zaria: “Some people ask, ‘Why not do this? It is a very low-budget execution. You can do things and be scrappy and still be iconic. You don’t have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to convert people. It’s possible to do it where they get it.”. (YouTube, 2023)
The next best step for your business is brainstorming together as a team. Get ideas from what others are already doing on social media. Look at trends and see what is working for others. A lot of social media involves one person doing something and it going viral, and then someone else copies it but adjusts it to fit their narrative. This is how trends are started, giving you a chance to be put in the spotlight.
Zaria: We genuinely believe in being scrappy and creating the content ourselves. Someone will say, ‘Use a microphone, and then someone else will be like, no, don’t use a microphone; use a water bottle for the tik tok.’”
Zaria: “A lack of money and time brings out the creativity in this. Lack of money inspires creativity, and I think the young and the poor have that in abundance. So that’s probably why you see more innovation coming from younger people: They lack things.”
Staying True To Your Mission | Candy To The Medicine
The best mission statements are formed when you say exactly what you are doing and how you are making that happen. This will connect with your audience and make it easy for them to understand. Moreover, it will help you stay focused, ensuring you don’t stray away from your core mission.
Duolingo’s mission is ‘To make Quality Education Free, Fun, and Accessible to All.’ This is easy to understand and tells us exactly what their business does. Keeping your mission in the forefront of your mind will guide all your decisions.
Zaria: “You should have one or two sentences of what you know you are doing so that just becomes the north star for every single piece of content you put out there because it just makes things easier”. (YouTube, 2023)
Your business will produce a greater impact and success by basing your decisions on the foundations of your mission.
“What we have established with our TikTok is that language learning is hard, so we make it fun. So everything is going to be judged by that human truth. Duo is everywhere, and that is what we want it to be, so Duo will stop at nothing for you to do your lesson. When you know your human truths and what your strategy is, then you can assess where you want to be and how you want to show up.” (YouTube, 2023)
Remembering the truths of your business can easily help you judge and assess how you want to deliver your content, making for an effective marketing strategy.
Zaria: “It’s not saying what people think they know about your brand, it’s the truth that connects it, and that is kind of like the funnel that I have seen. If you have to make content, why not make it entertaining, why not make it something that people want to consume” (YouTube 2023).
A persuasive hook followed by your mission can be the basis for smart and effective social media marketing. At Duolingo, this can also be known as ‘Candy to the Medicine.’ A strong hook can also be a small story. Storytelling is a powerful tool in the world of marketing because it ‘hooks’ your audience.
Zaria: “Language learning is hard, so we make it fun, and every piece of content will have some mention of that. Many comment on our videos: ‘I didn’t see a lot of learning in this Duolingo thirst trap’ and the way we approach that is this strategy that I love called, ‘Candy to the Medicine’ where essentially the candy is going to be the Duolinog thirst trap but the medicine, you might find it in the comment section, you might find it in the caption or of us doing or mentioning something about our app or language learning and fun and innovative ways.” (Youtube, 2023).
Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain
Small businesses that desire growth can hone their social media strategy to mirror Douligo’s. As stated above, being creative with what you have by posting on social media gives you nothing to lose and everything to gain. It is a no-expense risk.
Duolingo has set the perfect standard for all small businesses to follow. It’s up to you to decide if you want to take the risk and follow too.
References
Baja, S., (2023). https://www.contagious.com/news-and-views/duolingo-social-media-marketing
Gianna, P., (2022) Retrieved from, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/meet-duolingo-owl-how-zaria-parvez-turned-companys-tiktok-prudente
YouTube, (2023). Retrieved from, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnORCh1HiGE
