Our CEO broke down exactly how Duolingo, the language-learning app. moves fast to build a loyal audience in Inc. Magazine.
It’s hard to overstate how important speed and experimentation are to finding marketing success. And that’s not just good advice for brand-building on TikTok, either. These days, if you’re fundamentally too slow and too scared, you’ll find yourself always playing catch up, basically setting your marketing budget on fire. But with the right mindset, you’ll not only earn success with TikTok audiences but also on whatever big platform comes next.
Just ask marketing trailblazer Duolingo, a fearless company whose social strategy was not limited to their TikTok account. While other brands either still see social media as a secondary responsibility for junior staff to run or wrap themselves in layers of rules and approvals, Duolingo moves at the speed of memes and culture. It understands that audiences aren’t waiting around for you to “align on messaging.” The proof of its approach lies in an 800+ percent increase in their market value since it began its social strategy. Forget fluffy brand awareness. That’s real business impact.
Duolingo didn’t get billions of impressions by following old school rules of marketing. Its team felt empowered and supported to try weird stuff, see what landed, and double down fast. And if brands want to be ready for wherever the next wave takes them, it’s worth taking a few lessons on staying ahead of the curve from one of social media’s favorite brands.
Build the right team, then get out of the way
Most would probably point to Duolingo’s social-media team as its secret sauce. To its credit, the brand recognized that its team couldn’t be a bunch of traditional marketing veterans, so it brought together a perfect blend of social-media platform specialists so that its ideas are tailored for each audience and not composed in an environment as stale as a boardroom. Just as important, it gave that team unprecedented freedom to move intuitively—leading to a fast-moving, frictionless approach that many others should follow.
Know thyself
Before any brand starts posting, it needs to align deeply on who it is. This isn’t a simple voice and tone exercise, but an opportunity to go deep to uncover what’s off limits so that the rest is open territory. This approach is part of the reason Duolingo can be edgier than a typical brand. The goal is no more approvals and no more questioning—just seamlessly operating from a place where everyone on the team knows exactly what the brand is on social.
Add personality over polish
From the brand’s homicidal owl to its Dua Lipa jokes, the world that Duolingo built worked because it felt human, messy, and a little risky. Too often, brands spend a lot of time building robust but rigid strategies without room for experimentation. But social doesn’t work like that. It’s about posting and trying things, listening, and engaging in authentic ways. After all, people don’t connect with brands that sound like robots. They connect with brands that sound like people.
Create a world, then live in it
Duolingo is constantly in the comments, roasting people, replying in character, making inside jokes with its audience. It isn’t afraid to blur the line between brand and culture while actually talking back. That constant back-and-forth builds real community, allowing users to feel like they are in conversation with a friend rather than being marketed to.
Go to the edge, then go further
Don’t forget to double down on what works. Duolingo saw how much success was happening on its social platforms—from the tone that was created there—and it started to apply that tone elsewhere, including a high-profile Super Bowl campaign. Social is an amazing learning and testing ground that can then be replicated into other areas of the business or marketing. Be social-first in how you discover and test ideas, but then apply those ideas elsewhere.
These are the organizational and philosophical tools that will not only keep Duolingo ahead, regardless of the platform, but also give a boost to any brand committed to building its muscles of empowerment, personality, and cultural fluency.
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