Zaria Parvez & How Duolingo’s Viral Strategy Redefined Branding

We’re breaking down how Duolingo went from a language app to a social media powerhouse—all thanks to some seriously unhinged (and genius) marketing. Dig into the bold, chaotic, and wildly effective strategy that turned Duo the Owl into an internet icon. Learn about the mastermind behind it all, Zaria Parvez, and how her fearless approach skyrocketed engagement, daily active users, and revenue. From the power of creative risk-taking to why authenticity wins every time, we’re unpacking what personal brands can steal from Duolingo’s success to stand out and scale.

Time Stamps:

01:34 The Death and Resurrection of Duo the Owl

03:25 The Woman Behind Duolingo's Social Media Success

04:11 The Evolution of Social Media Marketing

07:02 Zaria Parvez: A Visionary in Social Media

09:06 The Impact of Creative Marketing Strategies

12:34 Authenticity and Creativity in Personal Branding

31:12 Leveraging Social Media Platforms Effectively

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Transcript

Episode 085: Zaria Parvez (Duolingo)
===

Joanna Newton: [00:00:00] Zaria's managers were probably like, but what about results? sure, we can go viral, but is that gonna translate to customers?

Is that gonna translate to dollars? Duolingo had explosive growth From this switch. They had increased organic engagement with millions of comments and shares on posts.

Your daily active users is like one of the most important things you can look at. It was up 51%. for them. It was 40.5 million in a year. Of total daily active users. Revenue was increased during this time about 41%. the impact of the social changes. Grew the company, grew their bottom line, 


Welcome back to another episode of the Her First podcast. We are so happy you are here joining us and listening, and so glad you're here. If you aren't currently subscribed or [00:01:00] following us, please do so so you can catch every episode. Now, today we're talking about Duolingo and the social media coordinator who. Created the sensation that is Duo the Owl. 

Hi, I'm Joanna Newton. I'm the co-founder of Millennial Marketer, a course creation agency that helps creators build their own online digital products.

Michelle Pualani: Hi, I am Michelle Houston, founder of To Be Honest Beverage Company, a non-alcoholic functional spirit brand, as well as mentor and coach to where personal development meets personal branding. 

Joanna Newton: Now, if you've been paying attention to social media or the news, you may be aware of the recent Death of Duo. That's Duolingo Owl Mascot. Early this year, February 11th, Duolingo announced that Duo had died. From waiting for users to complete their lessons. Now, if you don't know what Duolingo is for a quick second, Duolingo is a LA a language learning app. So they're a educational [00:02:00] brand that helps people learn how to speak new languages. And one of the super kitschy things that they've done is create this world where duo. Encourages you or oftentimes makes fun of you for not completing your lessons. February 11th, they announced duo's death and it just skyrocketed The impressions, the messages, the amount of social mentions of DUO during that timeframe just skyrocketed by over 25000%. They created the hashtag RIP duo. It was trending. People were mentioning it. All kinds of brands. big name brands, were doing eulogies to the Owl and talking about missing the owl. And it was all over social. Now you don't have to worry 'cause Dua was still alive. He came back to life on the 24th of February. It was just two weeks. they really went wild with the death of their [00:03:00] mascot to create. Massive social awareness massive social growth. They even like changed the icon of the app to like, the owl with like xs on his eyes for being dead for that period of time. So much so that my 7-year-old daughter noticed it and knew what was going on and followed what was happening with Duo because it was that engaging of a moment on social. So today we're talking about Duolingo and Duo, the Duo, the Owl, but we're also talking about the woman who is behind Duolingo social media.

Glow up now before Duo, the Owl became such a almost household name. Before duo, the Owl took over their social media. Duolingo was just a typical run of the mill educational brand on social media, this was before a social media coordinator had an idea that completely changed their social media and their marketing. 

Hi, I'm Joanna Newton. I'm the [00:04:00] co-founder of Millennial Marketer, a course creation agency that helps creators build their own online digital products. ​

Michelle Pualani: We're in an age of disruptive content, like social media is not what it used to be 10 years ago, five years ago, even two years ago.

Things are evolving at such a rapid rate and brands can't really get away with just posting general. Benign content about their products. We're in the era of lifestyle brands, of personal brands and representation, if you look at Duolingo, yes, they have a mascot, but it's ultimately become a personal brand because the owl is the representation of that brand.

If you look at Geico and the Gecko, affiliation with the two is the gecko is. The brand and we affiliate and associate with people so much more so than we do inanimate objects. So if you're selling a service, if you're selling a product, [00:05:00] if you're selling something that is educational, something that would be an everyday thing, People don't really connect with that as well as they do people. If you just kind of think about how we associate, how we affiliate, what we pay attention to, Humanity. It is emotions. It is feelings. And we buy and we invest off of feelings we justify with logic and rationale, right? so when we can associate and affiliate with another personified thing like Duolingo as the owl, the mascot of this.

Brand. It makes the brand so much more real to us. It makes it so much more relatable and we're able to have a connection that then leads to our investment, leads to buying power. It leads to paying attention to this disruptive campaign about Duolingo. Death. So I think it's something really important to keep in mind that even if you're not on the scale of something like Duolingo, the brand, the reach that they have, that you can still create disruptive marketing in your content [00:06:00] and in your campaigns by being really thoughtful and intentional and creative and being okay with what we've talked about before, polarizing making choices that are in alignment with your brand, your product, your business, but also.

Allows people to self-select whether they wanna be a part of this or not. And so gone are the days of boring, everyday run of the mill type content creation and business marketing, and enter the era of absolutely disruptive, polarizing, and scroll stopping content. That's important if you're gonna be in this industry moving forward.

Joanna Newton: Yeah, and we're gonna dig into some of the specific things that the account and Duo the Owl has done. We talked about the death, which is like a wild thing for a brand to do. But what's so amazing to think about is that disruptive creative ideas. from people. I think what layers and makes this story so interesting is the story behind the true [00:07:00] creator of this new social media glow up. Zaria Pervez, who is really the creator and the mastermind behind the. Activities and actions of Duo the Owl on social media. started her first career ever at Duolingo, so she graduated from the University of Oregon with a major in advertising. She worked as an intern at a, you know, a few different.

Places like the American Advertising Federation then applied to be so Duolingo social media coordinator. Now this was a role that was looking for someone with two to three years of experience, but Duolingo was really impressed with her and took her on with no, experience, this is where she had this crazy idea to really make the owl a character and make the owl do.

Kind of wild and provocative things, like things you wouldn't expect to see from an education brand mascot. It was risky, [00:08:00] especially when this happened. TikTok was newer. Brands were a little less wild. Now we see like Wendy's. Saying crazy things on X or Twitter and like brands are being much more provocative, much more, as you said, Michelle, like scroll stopping and just saying crazy things. But this was before that was happening. So really Zaria was a bit of a visionary when it came sort of morphing Like a non influencer focused brand, like a non-personal brand image to kind of morphing it with that personal brand, which was really interesting to watch. She got the job with Duolingo. She did some crazy things and had great managers who let her and supported her along the way, and within two years she was leading Duolingo entire social media presence. Now, I saw her talking about this in an interview a few weeks ago, talking about how. Duolingo [00:09:00] strategy became social first she revolutionized the owl and the type of content that they made.

you know, we talk a lot on this podcast about social media, but there are lots of other marketing strategies and other things you can do to grow a brand. Social media is just a piece of it and a lot of apps and brands like that don't focus on social to drive engagement, to drive users to create brand growth.

A lot of times they'll focus on advertising or partnerships, television, advertising, all of those kinds of methodologies, like SEO search engine optimization, like social isn't their primary way that they're growing, but because of. The way she revolutionized the way that Owl interacted on social.

They became a social first marketing team and now she runs she is, under 30 years old running the social media for this massive 

Michelle Pualani: It is an inspiring story to recognize that [00:10:00] time doesn't always beget success in someone like Zaria who has had a future thinking mindset and perspective about what's new, what's innovative, how can we change this up and make things different. Make a splash in the industry and really change the perspective on what it means to be a language learning app in our present day.

And to do that at such a young age gives, it always inspires me. Like I look at our young people 'cause I'm 34 and so I look at people in their early twenties especially, and when they're making such an impact and speaking up and having confidence and voice and pushing for what they believe in. And making changes in our industry and in business as a whole.

I think it's really powerful It helps motivate me to think about things differently because I feel like I definitely get stuck in the rut of paying attention to, oh, this is what worked for this person, or this social media content [00:11:00] creator or this influencer, and so just follow that blueprint and that strategy.

We've talked a lot about. On this podcast before about the path that people take and how sometimes you can do all of the right steps, but it doesn't necessarily create the same success or the same outcome that you're hoping to produce that they were able to produce. And when I think of, and I look at all of the brands on the market that have grown rapidly, something like Poopourri or Liquid Death, something like Duolingo, they're not following.

Everybody else's path. They're creating and carving their own. we definitely get stuck in the rut of, Hey, I've never done this before. I don't have the experience, so I need to look to and learn from other people. And it is important to understand the principles, the foundation. You know, marketing and advertising strategies haven't changed when you look at the pillars over generations, but.

When you look at kind of how they're crafted and put together today, that has changed. That has evolved, [00:12:00] and it's not because people are doing the same thing over and over again. It's because people are innovating, they're changing, they're creating anew, as content creators as businesses, sometimes I think that we get stuck in this feeling of like.

Oh, this is what worked for this first person for paid ads. Oh, this is what works for someone else's content creation strategy. Oh, this is how people are doing their email marketing. I think it's important to learn, but if you're gonna be a standout brand, if you're gonna be that brand who exponentially grows at a really rapid rate and scale, I think you really do have to step outside the norm and think.

More critically about how you're presenting yourself and how you're creating the face of your brand In our industry today, and like Joanna mentioned, that's not always just social media. I mean, if you look at traditional companies, there are all types of ways to market and to sell. And so there are all these different avenues and channels.

Social media content creation just happens to be the lowest barrier to entry, the most affordable. If you're doing it yourself, it's just time and [00:13:00] energy that you're investing. Still resources, but you're not putting dollars out the door necessarily if you're not hiring an agency or growing your team.

And so when you're able to step back, not just get into trends, not just Let me follow that blueprint. Let me do that thing that they're doing. When you can step back, think a little more creatively and say, well, what is the voice that I have and how do I wanna bring that to the forefront?

What can I say and how can I approach this process that is going to be different, that is going to be distinguished from all the other noise online?

Joanna Newton: If you're going to create something that's unique, super impactful in all of those things, you can't really follow someone's exact blueprint and do exactly what they do. There's fundamentals of marketing that are real. You need to get their attention. You need to build trust. You need to create a path for them to follow, but exactly what all of those assets and things are that do that in a journey. You get to play and [00:14:00] have fun. And I find too many people are too focused on what everybody else is doing. What has worked in the past and too tied to chat GPT, that we're just creating the same things over and over again. I use chat PT for my marketing, but I use chat PT to help me with my ideas or make suggested edits to my ideas.

The idea is still mine. Even if I'm using like chat, I don't always use it, but if I'm using it to help mold or, or help me strategize, it's, it's a very different use than saying, Hey, chat GBT give me 10 social media posts that Target female business owners, I'm coming up with the ideas and using tools to help cultivate them. And I think what you know is really interesting of this story is that, Zaria did this with a faceless brand, so to say, and turned it into a brand with a face, with a persona, You know how that worked. [00:15:00] before this, you know, Duolingo had a social media presence. They had users, it was functional, it got them new users, but it wasn't distinctive or special in any way. And she really created this unhinged, hilarious, viral worthy moment with Duo. With this persona duo is chaotic and sassy. he flirts with Dua Lipa. Like there's this running joke of like him wanting to be with, Dua Lipa. He's very obsessive and like threatening people to like, you have to do your lessons.

You haven't done that. This has even seeped its way into the product, right? From the marketing to the product marketing of user engagement. There's inappropriate dances and jokes, and some people could see that and say, oh my gosh, I don't want kid using that, or I'm not gonna use that because it's inappropriate.

Now Duolingo has like a K 12 curriculum arm and schools are still buying [00:16:00] into it. people want that irreverent font, like what happens when you take something that can be kind of boring, like language learning. Making it fun, making it interesting, making it a little chaotic and sassy. It makes it a whole experience and almost a lifestyle brand that you're buying into more than just a language learning app.

Michelle Pualani: And I think we have to acknowledge how much things really have changed and be okay with that. Again, I come from a slightly conservative background, and so there are things that happen on social media and in entertainment, in our music industry and movies, and even in the books that I'm reading that I'm like.

Oh my God. Like this is a real thing. Like I do feel like a very young, sheltered, naive woman who's being exposed to the way of the world and recognizing that it's okay. Like there are these things that are controversial in the social media content creation, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is, corrupting our youth in their execution of language [00:17:00] learning, So we kind of have to think about the parallels that are positive and not negative. And it, I talked to some teacher friends of mine, or people who work with kids, and their exposure to things is just so different from when we were younger and from the past that.

They, you know, use language differently. They are aware of things that are what we would previously have thought not appropriate for children. There's just a real shift in awareness and what people are exposed to, there have been a lot of barriers that have been broken when it comes to language, sexually explicit content violence, all of these topics that, again, from like a naive, maybe conservative.

Perspective of older generations that wasn't okay or politically correct. There's a campaign that I see consistently. It's used by different sunglass and eyeglass wear brands, but especially for like VR goggles recently. and the tagline is, we wanna sit [00:18:00] on your face. we've shifted is the point that I'm making, and I think that I still come from that point of like not wanting to ruffle feathers, wanting to be politically correct, not using foul language, like not being sexually explicit or sassy or doing these things, but. We're in a different era where shows like Bridger Tin on Netflix are widely consumed. The content that we're consuming in entertainment and our media has completely transitioned and changed. And so I think, again, that's where these. Brands and personal brands and influencers are coming out with content that you would think be like, oh, that's not a good representation of the brand.

But it is because it's like our universal consciousness has become okay with the types of content that we are exposed to and our barriers. Have been drawn down, so it's not a very good way of explaining it, but I just feel like things have really changed and it's okay to be controversial now.

If [00:19:00] anything, it's encouraged and celebrated.

Joanna Newton: And you might be listening and saying like, well, I don't like that. I don't want things to be more provocative. I don't want things to get less conservative that's okay, and that might be part of your brand. This isn't to say good or bad or, It's that you have to get attention and you have to say something as a brand. And I thi, I personally think it's really fun that people can be more free and more creative and express more. At the same time with all of this, on the other end of things, there's a big movement with like, the trad wife content. on the internet of women who are saying, I'm staying at home. I'm making all of my meals home cooked.

I'm wearing wholesome, modest clothing. Like that is another movement that you see in terms of social content. And what you see with both of those things is that they are extremes. they're both extremes to attract get attention. And if you want your content to stand out, if you want [00:20:00] to find people to be customers, you have to stand for something and some people aren't gonna like you for it.

Some people might un. Follow you for it, but the truth is the results really speak for themselves. So I'm sure I can imagine some of the conversations in those social media brainstorming days of like the early start of Duolingo the owl, Zia's managers were probably like, but what about results? sure, we can go viral, but is that gonna translate to customers?

Is that gonna translate to dollars? Because that's the real thing, and that's the connection. You have to make sure I could probably try to go viral by doing crazy things on the internet that might not actually fit my target audience and my funnel and who I'm looking for. Duolingo had explosive growth From this switch. They had increased organic engagement with millions of comments and shares on posts. People were like expecting to get entertainment, not just language, not just lessons, but this is the big thing. They're daily active users, which is a really [00:21:00] important stat for apps.

Your daily active users is like one of the most important things you can look at. It was up 51%. for them. It was 40.5 million in a year. Of total daily active users. That's wild. So the increased, the provocative, the wild, the unhinged social content drove user engagement. that's the key here.

It was worth it for them because it drove that user engagement. Could people have hopped off the app because they were like, I don't like these jokes maybe, but the overall growth was really there. Revenue was increased during this time about 41%. the impact of the social changes. Grew the company, grew their bottom line, now there's just major industry influences. Other brands are now trying to match that approach. We talk about Wendy's, Wendy says unhinged things. We see brand characters now fighting with each other [00:22:00] on the internet, and it helps both brands. Right? And I think that. It's interesting to watch, right? These brands trying to take on a persona, trying to replicate what a personal brand could do without having to jump hoops, but creating characters that people can follow and fall in love with. And I think you mentioned the Geico Gecko, That's, you know, an.

Older version of this, this 2.0 is much more unhinged than the Geico gecko was. But that was kind of a start of like making insurance fun because there's like this gecko with a personality and something to say that's not just buy my insurance because that is not fun or creative or engaging.

Michelle Pualani: I had a mentor and the business owner of a gym that I used to work for a successful local gym when I was teaching functional fitness, and it has really stuck with me and has been really powerful in impacting the way that I approach life. The way that I approach business is that we take what we do seriously.

We don't take ourselves seriously. [00:23:00] And so I think it's important to remember that is that you can have humor, you can have joy, you can have compassion. You can have sadness, you can have chaotic, you can have drama. You can integrate those unserious things to what you do and how you promote that, but be really serious about the service that you deliver.

Duolingo is still a phenomenal language learning app, right? The product that they deliver is. Still top tier, and you can have a really high quality product service offer with approaching a more relatable content creation, marketing, sales strategy. taking yourself so seriously so that everything needs to be completely professional.

I can't make any mistakes. can't be silly or goofy. You wanna think about, especially from a personal brand perspective, is how you can wrap all those things into what you put out into the world. And as Joanna mentioned, like don't do things that don't align with who you are. You don't have to be super crass.

If that's not part of your personality, I [00:24:00] don't recommend it because it's not gonna come off authentic or genuine. To your brand and therefore not gonna connect. But what are those things in your personal life that maybe you feel like you've been hiding from your professional life or you've been hiding from your personal brand?

How do you show up with your spouse? How do you show up with your family? How do you show up with your best friend and do you, and can you integrate those things into your professional presence and be relatable. Build connection and as Joanna's sharing those numbers with you, recognizing that the bottom line and the customer engagement and the ability to follow through is gonna be a lot higher.

' cause when people connect with humor, with empathy, with human emotions, they're going to fulfill whatever that thing is. So much more, you're gonna have higher success rates. You are gonna see longer client lifetime value. Your customer acquisition is not only gonna go up, but the people who are engaging with your brand and sticking around is going to be better because you're able to [00:25:00] connect at that level and they're gonna be more fulfilled by participating your brand and in your business. 

Joanna Newton: that authenticity is so important when you think about this from a personal brand perspective, right? And what we can learn from that personal brand perspective is how can you infuse your personality and uniqueness into your brand? as I was coming up in the corporate world, I had this idea of what, a successful marketing professional looked like, sounded like. Talk like, and I would try to be that person. I would try to, dress in the way that I thought was gonna get me ahead and A lot of times it made me a little less opinionated, a little more accommodating to people When I, in the corporate world to embrace like my personality, my personal style, my thoughts, my opinions, and was less obsessed with whatever, what else was doing? I started getting promoted as I moved into being a business owner and have had [00:26:00] tons of practice on discovery calls, you know what I mean? I probably take I don't know, 10 discovery calls a week where I'm talking to people, selling myself, pushing my company and all of that. become more and more comfortable with who I am, my personality, what I stand for, what I don't stand for. Sales become easier, not harder. And even if I'm a little less perfect around the edges, people relate to that and they connect with that. I was on a call the other day my mom who's hiring a lawyer for something you know, we had this call with this lawyer and this lawyer gave me an option.

It gave my mom an option that would involve not paying her anything. Right? That's something people would say, don't do that. Don't give people a way out. That made me immediately trust her and say, I think she's the one to help us She, she was being authentic and real with us. So I think we can think about both in our personal brands, like in our daily conversations with clients, with discovery calls on sales calls, our social content.

How can we be more us? How can we [00:27:00] infuse ourselves into our, our social content to really connect with people?

Michelle Pualani: in addition to authenticity, a lot of what we've talked about is creativity, is being willing to take creative risks, stepping outside of your comfort zone, thinking a little bit more intentionally. A lot of times we have these inspired ideas and these notions. What if I created a piece of content around this?

What if I sent an email about this? What if I did a YouTube on a deep dive of this topic? And then we start to. Rethink and we overthink and we say, oh, well maybe someone might not like that. Well, what if, if, if I say it this way, is it gonna offend people? I don't think I can really do that. I don't have the expertise or the experience yet, and we bring up all of these doubts, these insecurities, and we hold ourselves back.

But that creativity, that kind of intuitively inspired content is really what's gonna make a distinct difference. In your reach and in that connection that you're building with your audience. So being really bold, taking unexpected turns in your [00:28:00] content, not just sticking with the same thing that you've been putting out forever and, and ever and ever.

And it's not just educational. It's not just inspiring,

it's something that's gonna make people stop, pause, and reflect, think about it this way, the more that you can get people's attention, the more that you're making an impact, the more that you're changing people's lives. Our clients, the people that Joanne and I typically work with are really powerful individuals who are making a difference in the world through the medium of the work that they do.

And. We get in our own way by limiting the amount of people that we reach with our content creation, with our business, with our marketing strategy, with our sales approach, because we make it about us. What will people think about me? How does my hair look? What if I say the wrong word? We're consumed and honestly really egotistical about how this reflects on us and who we are as individuals in the world where, yes, you should be conscious about your personal brand and how you're putting it out.

Thoughtful in that marketing and sales approach. Think about them. What's gonna make them laugh? What's [00:29:00] gonna make them think? What's gonna make them feel? How can you encourage emotions from the viewer, the audience member, the prospective customer and lead, and then your customers, your clients, your students?

How can you make them feel something in this world? I gotta tell you like there are so many brands out there. There are so many businesses and you are unique and you are different and you are interesting, but there are. Hundreds, if not millions of other people who are gonna show up to try to sell what you're selling.

A lot of our business ideas, a lot of our products, a lot of our services, they are not unique in and of themselves, but the way that you approach the process can be, and so allow yourself to. Embody that creativity, embody the authenticity, and show up in your unique, interesting way so that you can make someone feel something through the experience, which will get them to invest in and pay attention to what it is that you're doing.

Therefore, income, therefore impact, therefore making a difference in the world. So get out of your own way and actually get out there put [00:30:00] this into practice and into action.

Joanna Newton: And there's so many creative things that you can do to really set your content apart. It doesn't have to be creating a Owl that does crazy things. It could be. you know, some of the fun things I see on social media are people do skits, right? Where they play two characters to show, experience or create, a moment that people get to watch. Some people just deliver like talking head videos, but they're always. Eating or they're doing their makeup or they're in their car or they're in an interesting location, you can, start with crazy hooks or, you see people do things where they're purposefully doing something wrong.

Oh, I saw this one video. This girl does recipes she always starts the video. She's got this chopper thing. and she starts the video talking and looking at the camera and like chopping vegetables. But it's doing a terrible job, right?

Like it's not working, but it makes you stop and go like, what is she doing? Like that doesn't make any sense. And [00:31:00] so we can be. Creative and do something out of the the box to get people's attention so that they listen to you and then they can, get the value of what you're actually doing and have to provide for the world. Another thing that we can learn from this example of Duolingo that I think it is important to really understand and lean into the personality of the social platforms that you are on. That's not to say you need to fit in, but Instagram and TikTok are two very different places, and sometimes there's content that's gonna work in both, But different social media platforms have their own way of communicating and their own nuances and their own things going on, and I think it's important to Lean into the culture of where you're posting. And even within the culture of where you're posting, there's niches within those cultures, right, like fitness, TikTok and conspiracy, TikTok.

Or two different places, [00:32:00] right? But if you lean into the culture, you can be creative with those parameters in a way that's going to drive engagement. I normally recommend that people really focus when they're getting started on two social channels so that they can create content that's truly native.

To those areas. Now, if you wanna cross post, go for it. But you're probably focused on growing two places with very intentional content. if you're making it with Instagram in mind and it happens to do well on TikTok, cool. But your main focus might be growing Instagram and building content for Instagram.

But understanding the culture of the place that you are creating content for is a big piece of having an impactful strategy.

Michelle Pualani: Always thinking about the context and the environment in which you're posting is very helpful. You don't want to post LinkedIn style content to Instagram one predominantly. 'cause LinkedIn is a written platform and Instagram is video at this point. Or graphics and visuals. being thoughtful about where you're showing up is an important part of the process.

We have [00:33:00] some really great episodes on this, specifically building your personal brand. So we encourage you to go back and listen. There's a part one and a part two about the foundations of building your personal brand. And then the second is steps, actions, ways to actually move about it.

But you've gotta know your voice. We talk about authenticity, we talk about genuine content creation. We talk about creativity and expressing yourself. But if you talk about. Dogs one day, and then you talk about pasta the next day, and then you talk about your fitness routine and then you talk about travel.

It's very confusing and maybe an influencer who already has a significant reach and has built an audience can do those things, but you have to realize what they're selling and what's the ultimate goal. So thinking through what is the thing that you're trying to sell? Is it digital products? Is it courses, is it your own stuff?

Are you trying to be an affiliate? Are you trying to get brand deals? Are you working with e-commerce? Are you doing all of these other different things that you can do in the online space? Being thoughtful about what's the [00:34:00] ultimate conversion that you're looking to accomplish, and then work backwards, and then showing up in your content creation by really knowing your brand voice and being able to clearly communicate what your.

Unique selling proposition is what your pillars are, what your goal is for the client, the prospective customer, the outcome that they're wanting to experience. You need to know those things and understand those things. And sometimes when you're just getting started, you're gonna spend a lot of time in the strategy and the research and talking to people and trying to better understand it.

And then you're gonna go to create content and you're not gonna hit the mark right away. You need to test. You need to experiment. getting those things out into the world by taking action and creating is part of the process. Trying to be more thoughtful and intentional about what that brand is, but then also testing and trying and doing it for a long time and doing it a lot to try to figure out.

What is gonna work for you? And find those things that feel aligned to your message, your mission, while also building the traffic, getting the [00:35:00] eyeballs, and moving people towards your products, programs, or services.

Joanna Newton: Well, thank you so much for tuning into this episode about Duolingo and Zaria Pervez, the amazing creative behind the brand social shift. I hope that this has inspired you to be more bold, more creative, and think out of the box with your content, with your offers, with your customer journey and user experience. Being bold and creative can make an impact, can help you find more people, and eventually at the end, make more money selling your programs, your services, and what you do. If you haven't yet, make sure you're following us. Subscribe and do all of the things you can get notified when we have another episode.