Duolingo’s Use of Social Media
If you think back to your childhood days, can you remember the radio and TV commercials for Rosetta Stone? Rosetta Stone originally had captured the market for learning new languages and was once seen as the “diamond” of language learning, with their iconic yellow tape boxes. The Rosetta Stone organization had a reputation of being the best of the best in language learning and was named in the Top 500 Fastest Growing Companies in 2006 (Munro, 2021). Just a few short years later, in 2017 the once-valuable stock tumbled and layoffs were happening.
Contrary to this journey, free language app Duolingo was formed in 2011 after founder Luis von Ahn realized that Rosetta Stone had too small of a market and too expensive of a product (Skid, 2022). Duolingo built its platform to serve mobile-first users with an easy-to-use app and best of all: free learning. The app started to gain traction online and within a few years had thousands of new sign-ups each day. Users loved the gamification part of the application, which helped to turn seemingly boring language learning into a game, where users could see how well they ranked and how long of a streak they had gotten.
Duolingo gamification example (The Octalysis Group, n.d.)
Besides excellent app design and a refreshed business model for today’s digital-first environment, Duolingo also created a strategic marketing plan that serves their prospective customers. This has primarily led to their domination on social media platforms versus competitors like Babbel and Rosetta Stone.
Social Media Explored
Duolingo is active on several social media channels, including Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Twitter, and arguably, most importantly, TikTok. Each channel has a slightly different strategy, but Duolingo’s main social media presence is witty, promotes the company’s goal of making learning fun, and often features Duo, their little green owl mascot.
Duo the Owl (Kron, 2021)
Across the several social channels, the look and feel of the content and design is cohesive and brings together a cartoon-esque feel to the content, which matches the app’s design and feel. Duolingo’s senior PR manager Sam Dalsimer says that to determine social media KPIs and success metrics, the team decides together the initiative each quarter and works to create social media posts that go towards achieving that goal (Ungerleider, 2018).
In 2020, Duolingo started their TikTok account, when other large consumer brands and companies were just starting to hear about the video-based app (NeoReach, 2021). TikTok is now one of the fastest growing social media apps and continues to capture the attention of Gen Z and Millennial users. One of the reasons that Duolingo has seen such success on TikTok is by capitalizing on meme trends and trending audio on the platform. Recent videos showcase Duo the owl singing along to Lizzo and other popular artists and bringing its own flare to trending content. This is clearly working with their audience of over 10M users - @Duolingo’s TikTok account currently has more than 81M likes on the app.
Duolingo’s TikTok reign has been credited to its “Evil Duolingo Owl” press in 2017. The fun, green owl was credited to having an “evil” side, thanks to the push messages that Duolingo would send out when a user wasn’t logging into the app, with phrases like “Looks like you missed your Spanish lesson today.” Internet-goers interpreted the phrases as slightly threatening, which caused a flurry of meme activity around the owl (Haasch, 2021). Duolingo started making jokes of their own and capitalized on the press moment on the best of ways on Twitter and Instagram.
Since then, their videos on TikTok have featured Duo and the owl’s fun antics that support the brand’s message. They consistently post at 3-5 times per week and create new and fun ways to capture attention to TikTok’s user base.
While Duolingo is clearly putting energy and time into their TikTok presence, other channels like Instagram and Facebook are also building their presence. The strategy on these channels tends to be more learning-focused and appropriate for a language-learning app. With that said, it’s clear that Duolingo has not focused on one singular platform to connect with customers and has expanded its ability to connect with customers by creating different audiences on different platforms.
Social Media for All Companies
Companies like Duolingo and unlike Duolingo should explore how social media could accelerate their growth potential. If a company’s customers seem to be active on social media, whether that’s Instagram or TikTok, or LinkedIn for the B2B customer, it may be a worthy discussion to understand how the marketing team could shape content to fit the channel and customer’s needs. Studies show that more than 3.9 billion people are currently active on at least one social media channel, which would lead a company to assume that a percentage of their customers are likely on social media in some capacity (Gaubys, n.d.)
Small marketing teams may need to focus on first building the most important social media channel to its customers. They should create content that reaches that consumer and be laser-focused on the right type of content for the channel - and then monitor and analyze results, based on the goal of the social channel. To determine which channels could be most successful for a brand, they should do consumer and competitor research to understand where consumers and their brand competitors are already on social media. Once a brand has been able to break into a new social media channel, it should test and try new types of content and see what works, as compared to the goals.
As The Social Media Today mentions in its Content vs. Conversation article, brands should look to stir up conversations with their customers versus just creating content to throw out information and data (Novak, 2010). Clearly, brands like Duolingo are generating a buzz on channels like TikTok because of their conversation-creating videos and digital content. Although many brands wouldn’t be able to directly copy Duolingo’s somewhat risky strategy, it may pay off to be a little more adventurous on social media than a brand would be on email marketing or on a website, for example. Brands should heavily consider their mission, goals and values before determining a best path forward for social media use and invest in the marketing resources that require high-quality content.
References:
Munro, I. (2021, June 25). The Meteoric Rise And Steady Decline Of Harrisonburg’s Rosetta Stone. Daily-News Record. Retrieved June 6, 2022, from https://www.dnronline.com/news/local/the-meteoric-rise-and-steady-decline-of-harrisonburgs-rosetta-stone/article_570c7a28-1a86-552a-a84c-f0ab36d3db5f.html
Novak, C. (2010, July 27). Why Conversation, not Content, is King. Social Media Today. Retrieved June 6, 2022, from https://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/why-conversation-not-content-king
Skid, N. (2022, March 3). Meet the 43-year-old “genius” behind $2.79 billion language app Duolingo. CNBC. Retrieved June 6, 2022, from https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/03/meet-luis-von-ahn-43-year-old-genius-behind-language-app-duolingo.html#:%7E:text=Now%2043%2C%20he%20may%20not,launched%20in%202011%2C%20or%20not.
The Octalysis Group. (n.d.). Gamification [Screenshot]. The Octalysis Group. https://octalysisgroup.com/duolingo-review/
Gaubys, J. (n.d.). How Many People Use Social Media in 2022? [Updated Jan 2022]. Oberlo. Retrieved June 6, 2022, from https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/how-many-people-use-social-media#:%7E:text=The%20latest%20figures%20show%20that,jump%20in%20just%20six%20years.
Kron, M. (2021, March 17). Duolingo’s owl [Photograph]. Duolingo’s Mascot Went Viral on TikTok by Twerking on Tables and Thirsting after Dua Lipa. https://www.insider.com/duolingo-tiktok-language-learning-memes-duo-owl-2021-11
Ungerleider, N. (2018, April 10). Duolingo Adapts Social Strategy To Reach Bilingual Users. AList. Retrieved June 6, 2022, from https://www.alistdaily.com/technology/duolingo-adapts-social-strategy-to-reach-bilingual-users/
Editorial Staff. (2021, November 30). Campaign Teardown: How Duolingo Memes Became Part of The Brand. NeoReach | Influencer Marketing Platform. Retrieved June 6, 2022, from https://neoreach.com/duolingo-memes/
Haasch, P. (2021, November 17). Duolingo’s mascot went viral on TikTok by twerking on tables and thirsting after Dua Lipa. Insider. Retrieved June 6, 2022, from https://www.insider.com/duolingo-tiktok-language-learning-memes-duo-owl-2021-11
Hi Katie,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your blog post! In high school, my Spanish teacher had us use Duolingo in class. I was shocked by how popular the brand has become on Tik Tok. The brand’s mascot can heavily be credited to the brand’s popularity and has been received well by users on Tik Tok. The first viral Tik Tok I saw of the brand was the “Evil Duolingo Owl,” making a point of view when someone uses Google Translate. The mascot and a few employees took part in the red light green light viral trend and used the trending sound associated with the trend by Florence and the Machine. The video featured employees running through the office trying to escape the evil owl after the words “green light” (Duolingo, 2022). It was a fun way for the brand to partake in the trend-like users on the platform while making a jab at the competition. I love the tone the brand uses in its captions. The brand has done a great job creating a persona to be the face of their brand on Tik Tok. The brand also often uses trending hashtags regardless of relevance to the content, which helps can help boost its traffic and lead to more engagement. The brand has become very successful on Tik Tok while learning to use the platform to its advantage.
I agree that small marketing teams may need to first focus on building the essential social media. Not all businesses have the resources available to work to establish a presence on multiple platforms at once. There are several factors that marketers should consider before jumping to a new platform. Not all industries are suitable for each social channel; it depends on the business’s needs, goals, the type of content, the intended audience, and more. It’s a strategic decision that marketers need to consider before investing their money and efforts. Once businesses have found a form of social media that fits their needs and has gained a following with active engagement like Duolingo did with Tik Tok, it can ease the transition onto other platforms. What is some advice you would give to small marketing teams to simplify this transition onto multiple platforms? Duolingo was a great example.
Excellent post!
Resource:
Duolingo. (2021, August 28). Duolingo on TikTok. TikTok. Retrieved June 7, 2022, from https://www.tiktok.com/@duolingo/video/7024117137392356614?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7105147836803565098
Katie, what a fun and informative post! I knew of Duolingo's TikTok success but was unfamiliar with the "evil" own. You made me laugh at the end of a very long Wednesday, so I truly thank you for introducing me to it.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly to Wendy's, the company I profiled this week, Duolingo began its social media accounts in a more professional way showing people worldwide sharing their language with others before transitioning into the slightly threatened and passive aggressive account beloved today (Noereach, 2021).
Neoreach (2021) attributed Duolingo's ongoing success with its mascot Duo to its willingness to incorporate existing memes and being unafraid to experiment. From melodramatic takes on Taylor Swift songs to vaguely menacing responses about missed lessons, Duolingo is consistently using humor and pop culture references to engage its growing audience (Neoreach, 2021).
Thanks for sharing your take on Duolingo's social media efforts, Katie.
Reference
Neoreach. (2021, November 30). Campaign teardown: How Duolingo memes became part of the brand. Neoreach. https://neoreach.com/duolingo-memes/