20VC: How Duolingo Scaled to 8M TikTok Followers, How to Create Viral Content, Why Most Companies Suck at Content Marketing and How to Change & Why You Should Not Work with Content Agencies with Zaria Parvez, Global Social Media Manager @ Duolingo
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 19 January 2024
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Zaria Parvez is Duolingo’s Senior Global Social Media Manager where she is famed for scaling Duolingo's TikTok from 50K followers in September 2021 to 8M followers today. The Duolingo TikTok has 143 viral videos (view counts of 1M or higher) due to Zaria’s creativity. What started as a test-and-learn initiative has become Duolingo's most successful social buzz and word-of-mouth initiative to date – all because of Zaria's insights, instincts, and expertise.
In Today's Episode with Zaria Parvez:
1. From College Student to TikTok Star:
- How did Zaria make her way into the world of social media and Duolingo?
- When did Zaria realize the power of TikTok? What did she do as a first step?
- What does Zaria know now about growing on TikTok that she wishes she'd known when she started?
2. How to Create a Viral Video:
- What have been Zaria's biggest lessons in what it takes to create a viral video?
- What does Zaria mean when she says the best content is "medicine to candy"?
- What does the ideation process look like for new content ideas?
- How much budget should be set aside for new content?
- What does Zaria mean when she says Duolingo's TikTok needs to view like a "sitcom"?
3. How to Tie Success in Content Back to Hard Dollars:
- How is "success" in content measured at Duolingo?
- How fast does Zaria know if a video is a hit or not? What is the right cadence to post?
- How should companies determine whether content is ultimately successful or not?
- What is the single metric that Zaria is focused on today?
4. How to Build the Best Content Team:
- Why should companies not work with content agencies if they want the best results?
- Why does Zaria believe you have to hire troublemakers if you want success in content?
- What are the single biggest mistakes companies make w
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The best way to start is to steal like an artist. |
| 0:03.2 | I say that because a lot of TikTok is like copying each other. |
| 0:07.6 | Like that is the truth of it. |
| 0:08.9 | I always say our TikTok is like a sitcom. |
| 0:11.3 | Everything we put out there is an episode. |
| 0:13.8 | I would say you have to hire troublemakers. |
| 0:17.3 | Troublemakers are the ones that are causing seismic cultural shifts. |
| 0:20.1 | Short form video has never been more important and I wanted to cover a breakout success story |
| 0:25.1 | of a company that's leveraged TikTok and scaled it insanely well. And for me, it was obvious. |
| 0:30.2 | We had to feature Duolingo. Duolingo's TikTok has scaled from 50,000 followers in 2021 to 8 million today. I'm thrilled to sit down today |
| 0:39.7 | with Duolingo's global social media managers Zaria Pavvez and the mastermind behind their |
| 0:44.7 | TikTok success, revealing her lessons, tips and tricks to killing it in content and specifically |
| 0:50.5 | scaling Duolingo's TikTok following to 8 million followers today. |
| 0:54.9 | And speaking of the immense power of short form video, |
| 0:57.5 | did you know Oli Pop took their sales from 3 million to 200 million by doubling down on video? |
| 1:03.6 | But wow, it is expensive to do well, and it takes a shitload of time. |
| 1:07.6 | That was until captions came into the world. |
| 1:09.9 | Honestly, captions is one of my |
| 1:11.1 | favorite tools. I use it here at 20VC all the time because it makes creating videos so easy and |
| 1:17.0 | simple. They have the most incredible array of tools from advanced captioning, which I use for all |
| 1:21.4 | the videos we do, to revolutionary dubbing tools, allowing teams to take one ad and repurpose it |
| 1:26.8 | even into multiple languages. |
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