In March 2019, having watched the organic growth of the Duo memes, the Duolingo team decided to embrace the back-handed love of the internet. The turning point: Duolingo gets in on the fun The internet bonded over feeling guilted and threatened by the little green owl, and for almost two years Duo memes continued to circulate. In October 2017, memes started popping up all over the internet featuring Duo looking rather murderous (and sometimes armed), threatening people with dire consequences if they didn’t do their language lessons. (It might have had something to do with the loophole created by the term “ overly creepy.”) The style guide goes on to point out that Duo is not negative, threatening, angry, aggressive, violent, or overly creepy.īut, despite the style guide creator’s best intentions, Duo took on a life of his own. In fact, the Duolingo style guide clearly states that “persistent” is one of Duo’s attributes, along with being helpful, motivating, organized, supportive, and slightly awkward (among other things). The thing is, Duo can be a little… persistent. He greets learners when they open the app, cheers them on when they achieve milestones and other goals, and - most notoriously - reminds learners to do their daily lessons via push notifications.Īnd that’s where it all started. If you’ve ever used Duolingo, you already know that the owl is a central part of the experience. Today, the little mascot has a starring role in Duolingo’s social presence, but his big break came back in 2017. When Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker founded the company back in 2011, the owl was more of a graphic icon but he’s come a long way since then. They’ve gotten a lot of things right about the way they’ve integrated their company’s mascot - the Duolingo Owl, known to his friends simply as “Duo” - into their social media content. Take the team over at Duolingo, the language-learning app that has more than 500 million users around the world.
You can, however, learn a lot from what other folks get right. Part of the challenge of getting social content right is that there is no one-size-fits-all strategy to guarantee success. It’s no wonder that many content creators get sweaty palms before they hit “post.” At the other end are the less sensational (but still damaging) crimes of publishing boring or awkward content that fails to engage your audience. At one end of the spectrum are missteps that create PR crises, putting your brand in the hot seat of public opinion (never a fun place to be). There are so many ways things can go wrong.
Publishing brand content on the social media stage can be intimidating.
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