How to dominate the next social platform, according to the Duolingo Playbook
5 days agoLast Updated: October 30, 2025
0 9 minutes read
How to dominate the next social platform, according to the Duolingo Playbook
By Jason Mitchell | Published: 2025-10-29 11:00:00 | Source: Inc.com
It is difficult to overstate how important speed and experimentation are to achieving marketing success. This isn’t just good brand building advice on TikTok either. These days, if you’re too slow and too afraid, you’ll always find yourself playing catch-up, setting your marketing budget on fire. But with the right mindset, you’ll not only find success with your TikTok audience, but also on whatever big platform comes next.
Just ask marketing leader Duolingo, a brave company whose social strategy isn’t limited to its TikTok account. While other brands still view social media as a secondary responsibility for entry-level employees to manage or wrap themselves in layers of rules and approvals, Duolingo moves at the speed of memes and culture. She realizes that audiences aren’t waiting for you to “fit on message.” Proof of its approach is that its market capitalization has increased by more than 800 percent since it began its social strategy. Forget fluffy brand awareness. This is the real business impact.
Duolingo You don’t get billions of impressions by following old school marketing rules. Her team felt empowered and supported to try strange things, see what hit them, and quickly redouble efforts. And if brands want to be prepared for wherever the next wave takes them, it’s helpful to learn some lessons about 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 their secret sauce. To the brand’s credit, it realized that its team couldn’t be a bunch of traditional marketing experts, so it brought together the perfect mix of social media platform specialists so that its ideas were tailored to each audience and not composed in an outdated environment like a boardroom. Just as importantly, he gave this team an unprecedented advantage Freedom to move Intuitively – resulting in an agile, frictionless approach that many others should follow.
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Know yourself
Before any brand can start publishing, it must deeply align with its identity. This is not a simple voice and tone exercise, but an opportunity to delve deeper into discovering what is off-limits so that the rest is open territory. This approach is part of the reason why Duolingo is more modern than any typical brand. The goal isn’t to get more approvals and more questions, it’s just to work seamlessly from a place where everyone on the team knows exactly what the brand is on social media.
From the brand Killer owl she has Dua lipa jokeThe world Duolingo built worked because it felt human, messy, and a little risky. Often times, brands spend a lot of time building strong but rigid strategies without room for experimentation. But social doesn’t work that way. It’s about posting things, trying them, listening and sharing in real ways. After all, people don’t connect with brands that sound like robots. They connect with brands that feel like people.
Create a world and then live in it
Duolingo continues In the commentsroasting people, responding with character, telling inside jokes with her audience. Don’t be afraid to blur the line between brand and culture while actually responding. This constant exchange builds a real community, allowing users to feel like they are in a 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 style created there — and began applying that style elsewhere, including High-profile Super Bowl campaign. Social media is an amazing learning and testing arena that can then be replicated in other areas of 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 at the forefront, regardless of platform, but will also give a boost to any brand committed to building its muscle of empowerment, character, and cultural fluency.
The opinions expressed by Inc.com columnists here are their own, not those of Inc.com.
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