Britannica states that Duolingo is the most popular and most downloaded language learning platform in the world. Duolingo has a long history on TikTok as one of the platforms most recognizable brand accounts, with over 17.8 million followers on TikTok and almost 500 million likes. It also dominates it’s competition on social media with other language learning platform brands like Mondly and Busuu who have 407.7 and 849.7 thousand followers respectively. So, what about Duolingo’s content makes it so popular on TikTok especially compared to other language learning platforms?
Duolingo’s TikTok videos almost never looks like your typical education service’s marketing, with some of their content, you wouldn’t even be able to tell that Duolingo is a language learning platform without knowing beforehand, yet their platform is still incredibly popular. Duolingo’s content is centered around their mascot Duo, in the content, Duo and other Duolingo characters recreate popular trends and memes as well as some original content focusing on the personality of the characters.
According to a Duolingo representative in the 14th annual shortly awards, Duolingo’s strategy on TikTok is “the goal of entertaining, versus promoting or marketing our product.” In her book Principles of Marketing for a Digital Age published in 2019, Tuten proposes a framework that divides social media marketing into 4 purposes, social community, publishing, commerce, and entertainment. People use social media for different purposes and Duolingo understands that very well; on TikTok, users are looking to be entertained, that means a brand may perform better by making content that is enjoyable rather than making every post seem like an advertisement. Duolingo has adapted the purpose of their content to match the way users use TikTok
How does Duolingo go viral so often?
Duolingo goes viral all the time, it almost feels like they have the ability to go viral at will. But Duolingo’s virality is not the result of magic, actually it can be explained by a strategic framework for viral memes. In Meme marketing: how can marketers drive better engagement using viral memes?, published in the 2022 peer-reviewed journal Psychology & Marketing, Malodia et al. argue that meme virality depends on three antecedents which help spread it, content, customer, and media. When it comes to meme content, there are four qualities that make a meme worth sharing, relevance, iconicity, humor, and spread ability. Duolingo benefits from making memes that are relevant, iconic, and humorous, Duolingo is constantly using the most current TikTok trends, sounds, and internet jokes and as a result their content already feels familiar to the audience. By using these iconic trends and dances their content becomes instantly understandable to their audience, for example recently Duolingo recreated a dance done in the Kpop band ATEEZ’s new single BAD which garnered over 14.4 million views and 2.4 million likes. Duolingo’s the nature of memes provide customers with process gratification when they consume Duolingo’s content, and the easy to share nature of memes provide customers social gratification as the memes help people connect and in a way, express their own identity.
Duolingo memes work because Duolingo doesn’t just feel like a brand; they feel like just another content creator. People don’t need to be interested in Duolingo’s language learning service to enjoy their content, they provides entertainment the same as any content creator and that allows them to reach such a massive audience.
AI Declaration
- ChatGPT was asked to explain Malodia’s Meme Virality Framework
- ChatGPT was tasked with skimming through articles and finding relevant information
- ChatGPT was tasked with proposing blog structures
Sunday Meyer 
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