Speaking the Right Language: How Duolingo Can Reach Teenagers
With a growing number of social media platforms, teenagers are increasingly accessible and yet increasingly hard to reach. It’s getting more and more difficult to get their limited attention; and if you don’t speak their language, then you’re just “basic”.
It’s not only terminology, but also where and how language is spoken. A few social media platforms have emerged that attract a significant user base of teenagers (ages 14–18). One of those platforms is Vine, a video sharing service where users create and share 6 second videos that are played on loop. Founded in 2012, the platform has already managed to attract 30% of the teenagers in the U.S., but have somehow completed eluded me. Welcome to the no-longer-cool-but-still-in-denial generation.
I’m not the only one who has overlooked Vine. Only 10% of the top brands on Twitter use Vine regularly. With 200 million monthly active users and 1.5 billion daily loops, that seems to be a missed opportunity. Sure, a lot of brands don’t target teenagers, but for those that do, Vine can be a great platform to build brand awareness within this hard-to-reach market.
One brand that is an expert in languages, but could use a boost in communicating to teenagers is Duolingo, a popular language-learning app. While it has 185K Twitter followers and 938K Facebook likes, it does not have a presence on Vine. Given the app’s brand image of fun and youthfulness, one wonders why not? It’s probably because it is not easy to create content for the platform. It takes a lot of creativity and outside-the-box thinking.
I finally signed up for the platform and have been investigating it over the last week. Here are some guidelines and inspirations I have gathered for Duolingo. They’re generally applicable to other firms that want to reach the youth market through Vine.
1. Relate to the Audience
This is not about you. It’s about them. In a short 6-second video, you need to capture their attention. The best way to do that? Relate to them! Create an “I’ve been there” moment. Don’t focus on the product. Focus on the storyline. Taco Bell does a good job of reminding us some of those awkward moments in life…
A simple way Duolingo can approach this is to brainstorm a list of memorable and relatable moments in our younger lives (e.g. first date) and pick a word that would remind us of it (e.g. “awkward”). Show a perfectly relatable teenager learning the word on the Duolingo app and throwback to that scene in her life. Relatable and funny — you’ve got their attention.
2. Work With a Vine “Celebrity”
Vine is a platform where many dream of becoming famous. Vine celebrities are legit. They have a large following base and are big influencers in the Vine community. They are effective in increasing brand awareness by generating views (loops) and shares (revines). Let’s be honest, teenagers don’t want to share videos by brands; they want to share videos by friends and influencers. That builds their social currency. Here’s an example of how HP worked with Rudy Mancuso, a Vine celebrity with 10.2M followers, using a product placement approach.
One of the best HP-created videos generated 196K loops and 130 revines. The video by Rudy Mancuso, on the other hand, easily generated 5.5M loops and 13K revines. The reach of Vine celebrities makes a real difference.
Duolingo can work with a few of these celebrities, whose personality and style match the brand image of the app, and leverage their creativity to create and broadcast content for the firm.
3. Humor, Humor, Humor
Vine is an entertainment hub. While “cool” and “informative” videos do gain some popularity, the #1 attribute that makes videos go “viral” is humor. Users on the platform expect humor; give it to them. Exceed their expectations. With a little bit of creativity, everyone can be funny. Just look at Michelle via The White House.
With a little bit of digging around, it turns out Vine is not such a difficult platform to use and teenagers are not so hard to reach. They just want to be understood, related to, and entertained. The best part is: you don’t even need to create your own content!
