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I first heard of Duolingo many years ago but paid no attention to it.
However, that changed when I watched a TED talk by Luis von Ahn, co-founder and CEO of Duolingo, in 2023.
That same day, I downloaded the app and started learning a language.
With a 502-day streak, I’m still going strong in my Spanish lessons.
Muchas gracias para esta app, Luis.
But I’m not alone.
Duolingo currently has over 100 million monthly users. People who learn at least 1 language on the app.
And we can talk all day about how great the app is at user retention.
But we’ll be talking about something else Duolingo has nailed so well.
Social media.
How has Duolingo amassed over 31 million followers across its social media channels?
I’ll dive into 6 things Duolingo has brought into its social media strategy and what you can learn from them.
1. Publish content that aligns with your brand voice
Duolingo says it’s a quirky brand.
And if you’ve ever learned a language on the app, you’ve seen this.
Duolingo takes this quirky voice beyond its app into its social media content.
Zaria Parvez, Duolingo’s senior global social media manager, says about the brand’s TikTok growth:
“For us, the biggest thing was, how do we be entertaining? We were looking at it more of Duo as a creator versus a brand.”
And even beyond social media, Duolingo maintains this brand voice in its emails.
This is a classic example of consistency in brand voice across every channel.
How do you maintain a consistent brand voice on your social media accounts and other marketing channels?
First, you have to define your brand voice.
Some common types of brand voice include:
- Professional
- Conversational
- Friendly
- Informal
- Funny
- Straightforward
Then, create a style guide that explains how your brand communicates with your audience. To break it down further, provide examples.
Of course, you can draw inspiration from style guides that already exist.
For example, Duolingo has a brand guidelines page. On this page, you’ll see links to elements like identity, writing, marketing, and resources.
You can also check out MailChimp’s and Microsoft’s style guides to inspire yours.
Once you finish this style guide, share it with every team member who communicates with your customers.
2. Tie social media content to your product
While social media is first about connecting with people, businesses are on social media to do more.
Doing more includes selling more products to potential customers.
And that should also be your ultimate goal.
How does Duolingo achieve this?
First, most of its content features Duolingo’s mascots.
This may be subtle, but it’s a great way to insert the product into these social media posts.
For current users, seeing these mascots reinforces their memory of using Duolingo.
For new users, this is a way to give them a taste of the product before they use it.
Apart from featuring mascots, Duolingo’s social media posts often make reference to taking your language lessons, which is what they want everybody to do.
So, while laughing at Duolingo’s humor, you get a reminder about using the product.
If you run a business, going viral is not the only goal.
It’s going viral and selling more products.
While you shouldn’t promote your product in every post, create a posting schedule that includes showing your product to your audience.
This includes:
- Showing how customers use your product in their daily lives.
- Humor related to people using your product
- Customers sharing how they use your product (user-generated content)
- Tutorials
Doing this exposes your product to followers and keeps it on top of their minds.
3. Take calculated risks
On February 11, 2025, Duolingo declared that Duo, its main mascot, was dead.
As you’ll expect, this created a lot of noise online.
From Instagram to TikTok to blogs, everyone was talking about Duo for a few days.
And this was obvious in the millions of views and likes that Duolingo’s accounts got.
Meltwater data showed that Duolingo’s mascot was mentioned 169,000 times during this period with #ripduo used 45,000 times.
In fact, Duolingo managed to land more social media mentions than brands that ran Super Bowl ads.
What killed Duolingo?
People not doing lessons.
What could bring it back to life?
People doing their lessons.
Thankfully, Duolingo returned to life a few days after millions of people gave their condolences.
This was a surprising and outstanding move by Duolingo.
Zaria Parvez says in Duocon 2022:
“To break through the noise, you need to involve risk. And that’s the cornerstone of good marketing, good social, and really anything good with impact.”
Standing out is risky because you’re doing what has never been done.
Will it succeed or fall flat on its face?
You can’t say.
A lot of people will praise Duolingo for this stunt because of its success. But not every risk results in success.
Some fail.
Despite that, your business should take calculated risks for selected marketing campaigns.
Calculated risks lead to outstanding results when they succeed.
Zaria Parvez says Duolingo defines calculated risk as:
“A consciously bold decision that marries intention and impact.”
This means risks should be connected to your brand. There’s no point in taking risks that bring little benefit to your brand, even when the risks succeed.
Zaria says:
“A lot of people ask about getting approval for our most risky comments. I have received buy-in that risks are more likely to be approved if there’s a direct connection to our brand. Not just stirring the pot to stir the pot.”
Another thing that helps Duolingo take these risks on time is its short approval process.
Content creators are not bogged down by a long legal approval process before publishing a 30-second TikTok video.
Here’s what Zaria says about Duolingo’s approval process:
“The people creating the content are the approvers. The buck stops with the social team. This culture is so ingrained now at Duolingo, that if I even ask our PR team or Senior Leadership if they want to approve a certain post, they always look at me like I’m crazy. They trust us to do our job.”
This means Duolingo’s content creators are able to go from ideation to publication within 3 hours, which is impossible in some companies.
This lets Duolingo publish content that is time-bound.
Of course, not every business can allow publishing without approval, but let the approval be fast.
Social media moves at a fast pace.
One way to make approvals faster is to educate creators thoroughly about your brand guidelines.
By educating your creators about your brand voice and what to avoid, there’s less need for a long approval process.
Overall, when taking risks is encouraged in your company, you encourage creators to push their creativity beyond boundaries.
4. Engage with your audience
Duolingo has perfected the art of banter with its audience.
So, you’ll often see the brand joking with followers in the comment section of each post and other brand’s posts.
And these comments generate thousands of likes and even more exposure for Duolingo’s posts.
Engaging with your followers’ comments does at least 2 things.
First, it encourages followers to post more comments. For example, a Duolingo user will post more comments since there’s a chance Duolingo will reply.
Second, engaging with your audience increases post engagement, which encourages algorithms to push your posts to more people.
Beyond these 2 reasons, Duolingo also uses its comments to remind users to take their lessons.
Zaria says,
“Our comment strategy was simple: the comment section was the new Duolingo push notification.
This works for engaging with the comment section on Duolingo videos as well as the comment section of other viral videos. We recreated Duo’s overly pushy personality on TikTok by bombarding comment sections everywhere.”
Duolingo discovered that these comments remind some people about their lessons, and they take some minutes off TikTok to do their language lessons.
So, look out for comments on your social media posts and reply to them. Also, comment on relevant industry posts.
5. Take advantage of popular trends
Duolingo finds a way to insert itself into other activities and events people enjoy.
You’ll find Duo collaborating with movies like Squid Game and Severance. Beyond that, Duolingo posts about events like the “owlimpics.”
It also creates campaigns for the owlidays and Christmas.
Think about it.
People have positive memories of these movies and events.
When Duolingo inserts itself into these conversations, the positive vibes rub off on Duolingo too.
Beyond this, Duolingo can reach fans of these movies who are not yet Duolingo users.
Keying into trends helps Duolingo take advantage of things people are already talking about.
To do this for your business, be on the lookout for trends. But only jump on trends that are relevant to your product.
Some social tools like Later display popular trends on social media platforms.
6. Tailor your content to each social media channel
When you look across Duolingo’s social media channels, you’ll notice slight variations in content for each channel.
For example, its TikTok account contains short and fun videos.
On YouTube, Duolingo goes beyond that. Here, you’ll see employee spotlights, case studies, product updates, and even Duocon recordings.
These are much longer than its TikTok videos but fit into the YouTube platform.
Even if you want to keep a consistent brand voice, you still have to make slight adjustments based on each social media channel.
For example, your TikTok content will be slightly different from LinkedIn content.
Doing this lets you meet the users’ expectations on those platforms, which also leads to better results in terms of your goals.
To use this for your brand, determine the social media networks your customers use most.
For example, customers of makeup products are likely to spend more time on Instagram and TikTok than on LinkedIn. But even when makeup buyers are on LinkedIn, they’re usually there for professional reasons rather than makeup tips.
Once you determine the best networks to reach your audience, focus on these networks.
Create a content plan showing your approach for each network.
These plans will guide your content creation for each social network.
So, keep in mind that social media networks differ, and the approach to content should also be different.
Conclusion
Duolingo has turned learning languages from a boring endeavor into a fun activity.
And the brand has also brought this fun into its social media strategy.
While you may have a smaller brand than Duolingo, these tips will still work for your brand.
So, adapt these tips for your social media accounts to reach more of your ideal customers.
Samuel is a freelance SaaS writer. He has written for top SaaS websites like GetResponse, SweepWidget, and Hopper HQ to raise awareness, attract users, and drive monthly recurring revenue (MRR). Get in touch with him to rev up your content engine.