The best way to start is to feel like an artist. I say that because a lot of TikTok is like copying each other. Like that is the truth of it. I always say our TikTok is like a sitcom. Everything we put out there is an episode. I would say you have to hire troublemakers. Troublemakers are the ones that are causing seismic cultural shifts.
We have 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 with Duolingo's Global Social Media Managers, Zaria Parvez, and the mastermind behind that TikTok success, revealing her lessons, tips and tricks to killing in content and specifically scaling Duolingo's TikTok following to 8 million followers today.
Speaking of the immense power of short form video, did you know Oli Pop took their sales from 3,200,000,000 by doubling down on video. But wow, it is expensive to do well. And it takes a shitload of time. That was until captions came into the world. Honestly, captions is one of my favorite tools. I use it here at 20BC all the time.
Because it makes creating videos so easy and simple. They have the most incredible array of tools from advanced captioning, which I use for all the videos we do, to revolutionary dubbing tools, allowing teams to take one ad and repurpose it even into multiple languages. Me in Spanish, it's a masterpiece. Those are my words. Other people probably think differently.
You can also automatically cut out pauses, add relevant zooms, and generate custom royalty-free music and more, or with just a tap. Captions is used by over 5 million people and businesses, and it's the best. Try it out now at captions.ai. Speaking of game-changing tools like captions, we could not live without Mirror at 20BC. Is it just me, or the project has so quickly become disorganized, cluttered, information all over the place. And that's where Mirror comes in.
Mirror Streamlines workflows, organizes information, and it allows the team to just align in seconds. How do we use it at 20BC? Or for every show we take 10 references per guest? That's about 40 pages of notes per show. Simple, right? Not really. It's taken across several different formats. It could be email, cool, WhatsApp, iMessage, or Mirror is our home for all of this content and data.
Now I find that information with ease all in one Mirror board. One Mirror board per guest, it's so simple, and so much time and energy is saved by doing this, and the teamwise better as they can see what each other has added to the board. It's a total game changer, so find simplicity in your most complex projects with Mirror. Your first three boards are free. When you sign up to stay at mirror.com for slash podcast, that's three free boards at mirror.com slash podcast.
You have now arrived at your destination. Zarya, I am so excited for this. As we said beforehand, I've been a fan for a long time, so first thank you so much for joining me stay. Yeah, thanks for having me excited to be here. Not at all. This is my favorite type of show where I write a schedule and would definitely not going to stay to it, but you know we should have it anyway to tell me.
You know, we see Jueling goes content stay. It's incredible. You nailed it. But how did you first get in the role with Jueling going content? That's not there. Yeah, I think it's not a typical story, but also feels pretty typical. I was a pandemic graduate, so I graduated in 2020 and I did advertising and marketing in school. So it was kind of a natural next step. But as for Dueling go, I actually wanted to be in a super small city. I did not like New York. I did not like Asian sea culture.
So trying to figure out like what does that mean for me and Dueling go like popped out to me mainly because the mission of Dueling go is really near and dear to my heart. It's to make education accessible, but what's even deeper to me than that mission of what it is is that it was in an inherently diverse place like it's been founded by two immigrants, like people who just you have to speak different languages here for the app to exist.
And so you're around people from different cultures different backgrounds and just a clarify you don't actually have to speak another language to work here, but like around you like you'll hear it and you'll see it in your part of that and that comes with the cultures and different cultures and all that stuff together.
So yeah, that's what brought me here and then for content. If I'm being honest with you, I started off for a whole year of just doing normal like happier with day posts and things you'd expect a language learning app to do. And it was it until a little bit later that he started taking more risks and creating the content we do now. What took it to the next level because there is plenty a huge amount of content, which is happier.
They happy Sunday happy mother day, whatever it is. Why did you go? I can be a little bit different here. I think it was the night of day of like being in an office for the first time. Like I always say the reason why our TikTok was so successful is because I didn't really know all that much about advertising. If I'm being honest, like I was a new grad, I kind of had fresh eyes on it and I remember walking into the office.
And this is like after pandemic, I don't know. But when the office opened for the first time and things were coming back to normal and I walk into the office and there was this big green owl, which is the suit we all know and love today just sitting in the corner. And I was like, that is so freaking weird. Like why is it just there? No one's reacting, whatever. And at the time it was just meant for like people team stuff where they go to recruit people.
And then the owl pops up and I love TikTok on my own. Like I was already consuming it. And I was like, what if I just make like a funny piece of content off of this. And it was nothing crazy risky. It was nothing like I would say to the extent of what you may see do. I was TikTok do today. But it was just different. It was unexpected and no brand was doing it yet. And I think that was kind of our insight. And it was like these small human moments that I think has made our TikTok kind of blow up.
I want to start kind of top down because I think a lot of people look at content that does very well and he was like, how do I recreate it? How do I do the same. And I think a lot of starts with actually before we get to the content, the platform itself. You were kind of given this open purview. Why did you decide TikTok was the platform that you wanted to spend the time on? And that was the opportunity for.
I think there's two ways to think about it. Honestly, I think one I grew up with TikTok. Like that was what I was doing and using and like grow up as in like being in college. Like that's just what I was on. And like during the pandemic, I was just on it. And this was a native platform to me. So I already kind of knew how it worked and how it functioned and what worked well. And what didn't work and what made me laugh.
And then I think the real tipping point for me was when TikTok mentioned that they had one billion users. And this was in September of 2021. And I remember so distinctly thinking if people are on TikTok, they're not on our app. So how do we bring people back to our app? And I'm a firm believer and I know, or CEO said this too, that I don't think like Babel or is that a stone or other language learning places are actual competitors.
Like our real competitors are like TikTok and other social media platforms that are like taking the attention away from doing your daily lesson. So how do we use that to our advantage? How do we bring the daily lesson or the push notification to TikTok and bring people back to us? So I agree that you totally on the competition. I just say Taylor Swift is my competition and I feel incredibly worried.
But I totally agree with you in terms of that perspective. I think the most important thing is like you said that you have to be a consumer of it because you figure out what works. Can I ask to what extent do you think TikTok is an art or a science? We have a TikTok team specifically here. And they think it's a science. And they're like, oh, we need this music and this font and this hit rate. Do you agree or is it not?
This is such a cop out answer, but I think it's a mix of both. And I'm saying that because if you don't have the science and you don't know how the science of the app works, your art is not going to go very far. So when we're hiring for our teams, for example, like I don't really care about your advertising experience. I don't really care about like what agencies you worked out. I care more about if I give you like a concept. Can you find a trending audio?
Tell me what to film, bring it together, have a good caption copy and good like text on video. That's like entertaining. And I think that has been more the litmusness if you can like actually create entertaining content. And it's a mixture of both. Like you cannot create entertaining content if you don't know the trends are because it might be a little bit too niche for someone to understand.
But if you're not a creative writer and you don't know how to make something punchy in five seconds, even if you have a trending audio, it's not going to do well.
I think that's a really good answer by the way, that wasn't a cop arch. VCs even more cop arched on my question too. As you mentioned trending audio there, I'm constantly stuck in this question of, do we copy the trends of what works this fond, this music style, or do we try and innovate and come up with our own creativity, concepts and push boundaries in that way? How do you think about copying what works versus doing authentic and different?
The best way to start is to steal like an artist. And I say that because a lot of TikTok is like copying each other. Like that is the truth of it. When we first started, these trends were us just copying what we see and obviously giving credit where it's due. But that is the nature of the platform. That's how these like voice audios go viral. It's me saying it in one scenario, somebody else saying it in another scenario.
And I think this idea of doing like an artist is okay and appreciated on TikTok where it's like this is your spit on it. And I think it's a great way to start honestly. Like I feel like if you're looking for trending audio, like click on the audio and just see what people are doing and see where you can bring your person into that.
However, I think that'll only get you so far after a certain point once you've reached your viral, do people kind of get the, okay, they understand TikTok and how it works. They're looking for more storylines and more things that you can bring. So I always say our TikTok is like a sitcom. Everything we put out there is an episode.
Some are amazing and go super viral. Some are just there to build the storylines. But it's something that can live in function as short form video content, even if it was to leave TikTok. So some of the storylines duo and like legal Steve or general counsel are always beefing duo loves to Alipa. We have Lily, this emo girl that hates duo, but somehow is always roped into do oceanant again. And it kind of exists and people who get the lore get it and we're always trying to build lore.
The mascot intervention where we invited scrub daddy, the teletubbies and we like remade like some iconic old things. We did a say once with scrub daddy, just fun, innovative things that will get people to be like, oh yeah, I remember when duo did that. I like it. So you have the thing I like with a continuing storyline is the resonance that builds and kind of the relationship that you feel to it.
The question that I have them with it though is like for that new followers, which you have so many of how do you make them feel a part of something when they're like jumping into season two, not season one. I would say that we literally just drop them into the deepest part of the ocean and say swim.
I feel like as marketer sometimes we get in this mindset that like we have to dumb it down and make it as simple and as explainable as possible because people are not going to understand it. And I feel like we have to have more trust in our users and our followers that they know to close the loop and can bring things together.
And I know this is an exactly your question, but when we first started our account and we were building content, a big question that we had was like, okay, if we're doing silly stuff that's like duo crushing over do a leap. How are people going to know that we're an effective language learning app like they're going to think we're silly and we don't we don't have any efficacy.
And I think for me, the response was always like we're able to be silly. We're able to do this because people know we have a good app that when they go and they go to the after they see our TikTok and their converted user and they go to the platform.
And they're actually learning a language. They recognize that you can be the thing and also subvert the thing. You can be funny on TikTok like you would with your friends, but you could also be serious when you're learning in school or learning and working and work or being on the app.
And I think it's trusting that our consumers are much smarter than we think they are. And even if we make them dive in deep like they can figure it out. They'll scroll back if they want to scroll back if it's entertaining enough, people will figure it out. Does it matter if the video doesn't if I can watch a video and take talk and I'm like, I have no idea that Juelingo is a language learning app.
Does that matter because the truth is you've built the relationship with me and I'll watch the next one because I like the first one. So does every video need to tie back? It doesn't. And that's what we're learning is that like people don't come to social to learn a language and very few people actually care about our app with our own social media.
If we're lucky, people will be like complaining about how they got a C- in Spanish and how much they hate language learning. Maybe they'll insult our app or they'll just confuse us with like do a leap. Like that is what people are talking about when it comes to social language learning like they genuinely very few some must but very few people care what Duelingo has to say about the new slang word.
Like it's just not something that they're going to social for. They're going for either break or for entertainment. So we need to grab them and meet them where they are. How do you come up with the ideas? You mentioned the crushing on Juelie for that. I have to admit I would be joining that. You mentioned that Steve legal officer and the relationship there. Do you sit in a room with a creative team and a whiteboard? What does that process look like?
The truth of it is it started with there is only one full time employee for social and that was me. These were genuinely just funny tropes that I thought existed in our office. I think duo is a very quirky place in general.
People have confused duo with duo leap for ages and that's been on our community like within Twitter and I always say for example for that like the comment section is your social brief like people will say stuff like lean into that like if they're telling you they want to see XYZ. Give them XYZ and it can be that simple and that's where do a leap I came from. It's always been a joke because Steve was also for a very long time the only lone general counsel at Duelingo.
People used to just call him legal Steve and like legal Steve we'd have to check in with him. It just became a funny natural thing that a menace like duo would not jive with a lawyer. What does that ideation process look like now? It was just you when you saw fun things in the office. Is it the same now? It's definitely more I would say buttoned up now you'd expect it to be we now have a head of social and we have a social coordinator and another social media manager.
That's four of us and it's honestly like a slack channel of dumping like this is trending. This is my audio. This is trending and this is my thought. This is what I think we should caption. This is what I think we should do. And I think the biggest thing out the ideation process for us is that it's not sitting in a room and brainstorming. I saw this trending audio. I took this suit. I filmed this. What are your thoughts and it's just going for it and creating the content.
And it's possible the content won't see the light of day but actually having that visual thing and kind of people working in silos so we can hit their niches and the fandoms they're part of. And then come together to see how we hit those different parts of the internet is how we actually brainstorm and create. I have so many questions. Could you have done this and had the creativity without being in the office? It's spot ideas, imagination. Would it have worked so well remotely?
I don't think so. And I say that as someone who was a homebody and loves being remote. I mean, if you have a suit, maybe by having this suit and just the random quirkiness and the thing this, like the things around our workplace is what's made it fun. And like even we're like, oh, we need a microphone.
Like a lot of times we're like, no, no, don't do a microphone. Like use a water bottle as a microphone for the TikTok. And like stuff like that where it's just like we want to use what we have and we genuinely believe in being scrappy and like creating the content ourselves. And so I'm going to see that in person. Can I just do you feel the pressure now with new releases in terms of content releases because you have it. Seven plus million followers. Do you feel pressure to post?
I would say I do feel pressure from our marketing team in general. I've been able to like succeed on a lot of different parts of like going viral and doing all this content stuff and like doing this with you. Like even talking here with you today, I started on such a high note that like I would say I'm more dealing with like that internal thing of like, you know what? It's okay if a video doesn't go viral and it's okay if we have to go back to the drawing board.
In total is okay and we're going to get to that kind of personal stretch because trust me, I have many thoughts on it. I've been struggling with some elements myself. You mentioned like elements that are trending that you're kind of taking a counter of and putting in you know, slat channels. Is that including like what's happening on Instagram or what's happening on Facebook or TikTok or is it just channel by channel like our channels transfer. But like, this is what I'm asking.
It's so hard man because sometimes I feel like it is and other times I'm like, it's absolutely not. But right now we're focusing a lot on TikTok reels and shorts. And I would say that TikTok and reels feel more connected and shorts just feels like a new ballgame. Like YouTube shorts feels like something like my 13 year old nephew would be posting from the back of his middle school bathroom. Like it's just so confusing and I'm like, I'm trying to understand gen alpha.
What goes there, but I would say like the trends are very different. The content's very different there. So we're still trying to crack that nut. And a lot of things that break the internet and trend on TikTok don't do well on shorts. Do you simply rip and replace for reels and for TikTok or do you like change format style audio font? Is it rip and replace or is it slightly amended at this rate of where we are?
I would say about 75% is rip and replace and what the other 25% is us trying to actually think through like what would work better on reels versus TikTok and like our way to alleviate that is we kind of broke out like who's working on which channels by like generational divides.
So we'll have like a little bit of elder millennials doing Instagram while we're doing TikTok and then we're talking to like our interns to help us with shorts and it's kind of like how those age gaps and how we consume media actually dictate who's posting on what I make make something that's super ticktokable and super fun.
But when I suggest it to post on reels. I've had an upper millennial be like that's not going to hit like fix and adjust this maybe change how this looks and we've done that and then it does really well. So they're like small iterations of the same concept. That's so interesting. So you have a so I agree with this but you have people per channel not people who work across all channels. Yes, exactly.
The biggest problem with content teams is they build no verticalized knowledge in each channel and so they just work across all them and they're like okay at all of them.
Yeah, exactly. So it's and I mean obviously like we're still a pretty small team so we'll be stretched across that every need to be stretched across but it's really helpful having almost experts in each channel like talk to us and get feedback and same for us like I'll be an expert in tick talking get feedback to my role manager who might be making some content.
Do you have a good read on whether a post will go viral are you like I know this one will and it does or like a debatable but we'll see. Do you have a good reader is it very spontaneous. I wish I had a go viral button so bad I would say that every time I feel like I have a good read the algorithm changes and I'm back to square one and I feel like myself in particular on our team of notorious for being if I get to into a project I'm convinced it's going to fail
and I like don't step back and I'm like wait it's actually funny because you get so into like the editing and the gritty you're hearing it over and over and over and over in your head we like this just not funny anymore so I don't have a read and I'm still learning and playing it by ear as a lot of us are I think though I do have a general idea of when something is really going to be successful and I think that's more of like the genuineness is like did I have fun creating this like was I laughing when I was doing this was this something that I find entertaining and if I didn't work at do it.
If I didn't work at doling go if I didn't give a crap about brands what I want to post this in my group chat and that's kind of my litmus test of like is this entertaining or good enough and I also send some pre content to my 13 year old nephew to be like what are your thoughts on this and like his response is always brutally honest so that's also a good helpful thing to see so having people that will actually consume the media outside of your brand to kind of review content has also been super helpful for me.
How important do you think consistency is on take talk how often do you post what are your thoughts around that I think there's a lot of lore that you have to like just keep posting and that's what's going to keep you successful.
I don't believe that that matters I believe that the quality of content is far more important than the quantity and a lot of the times I've had to step back because I got burned out from creating content and what I was trying to push out was just pushing out for the sake of pushing out and it wasn't good. And then when I took two weeks off nobody cared everybody went on about their lives it was okay came back viral hits and then people were fine.
I mean like the harsh reality is that no one's sitting there missing dual and go like they're not missing our app as much as I love to think they're sitting there missing my tick tock content like they're not like it's five seconds of their day just as we consume other branded content and taking that mindset and approach has helped me alleviate burnout has helped me create great content and also like not take myself so seriously.
Okay, so a I think it's not you and Julian. I know he's everyone and we all over emphasize our own importance like no one wants you miss your mother and maybe friends. Exactly. And even your mother's probably not watching your tick tock. No, yeah, exactly. My question is we also have YouTube shorts we have Instagram rails me a tick tock. Do we need to be on all channels a lot of people and founders say to me do I need to be on everything and I say no just be on one and be great at it.
Do you agree what you think you do need to be everywhere now? I feel like I might have a different response to this because of our brand truth. So for us, I'm very adamant about having like water two sentences of what you know you're doing so that just becomes like the North Star for every single piece of content you put out there because it makes things just easier. So for us like the what we've established with our tick tock is language learning is hard so we make it fun.
Everything is going to be judged against that human truth is it showing that we're having fun does this seem fun and entertaining is the messaging we want to give across with that truth. And then the other truth that we have is duo is freaking everywhere and that is what we wanted to be redo will stop at nothing for you to do your lesson. So for us, I want to be on multiple platforms because those are true to my brand.
However, I feel like once you know your human truths and what you know what your values are and your strategy is, then you can assess where you want to be and where you want to show up. But because duo is everywhere and we want duo to be everywhere, reminding you to do your lesson that I'm going to be on every platform as much as I can to my disability.
There's a shit question, isn't it? I mean, like I know I'm just like I'm thinking about it because if you have a CFO platform for like you know B2B SaaS, you shouldn't be everywhere. I know you should be on one and be really good at LinkedIn. But like everyone can learn a language. That was a terrible question. I loved it. No, I loved it.
Thank you. My question to you is when you think about mistakes that you made in the early days, what do you think back on and go, ah, that was a big mistake that we made.
So candidly speaking, I think I never realized, especially and I think this is a product of being at a smaller company, being in Pittsburgh, a very slow kind of sleepy town, is realizing when I push post, it's actually going to 7.8 million people that weight kind of gets lost in it when you're on the internet and you kind of I always say it's very easy to get lost in the sauce, you're busy commenting, you're busy creating viral content.
And it's really easy to like slip up and like comment on the wrong thing or say the wrong thing. But like candidly like I've commented on something that I probably shouldn't have before and I got checked and balanced for that and it was one of the biggest learning moments where like if I didn't cross the line, I wouldn't have known where the line was. That's something I know we all experience when you're growing up.
Okay, so that's one any other mistakes. We were like, ah, we shouldn't have done that. So I could tell you a funny story and this was just me not like realizing, but there is this trending audio at the time about my little pony and it was just like a normal like it wasn't anything crazy. But we ended up having like someone pose for it and do it and it ended up looking overtly sexual in a way that it shouldn't have.
And it was a very non sexual trend. So I was like, I don't get it. I don't see what you're talking about. Don't you see it. And at the time I remember CEO messaging messaging me and being like, bro, come on, like you can't post that. Take it down. And I think I was like, okay, like I was like, it's still doing really viral and it's doing really well, but we took it down because it's like his brand at the end of the day.
I think like that moment was like very much about recognizing that just because I get it as Gen Z and I might get it as a trend doesn't mean that'll always translate across people. So figuring out like the lesson there for me was like, if I believe in something that's risky and has potential to go viral, how do I figure out a way to convey that to people who may not look like me may not do the same things as me may not consume the same media as me, but still be on board with it.
So I think looking back, yeah, it was a mistake like getting a message from your CEO and I feel the night is never a great feeling. But also like figuring out the learnings from it has been really helpful of like how you keep pushing the boundaries in like productive ways. Oh, Lewis, don't worry about it, bro. It's fine. Yeah, and like honestly, it's funny because like the candid truth about it is like he does DM me and there's these open conversations and he's open to hearing pushback as well.
There's been times where he's told us to take down a video and I was like, okay, cool. But what if I like change the audio, fix up the text a little bit. Can I repost it? And he's like, okay, fine. I think there's that relationship that makes it feel I'm not alone and there's people giving feedback and it's not like me versus legal or me versus a CEO.
It's very much everyone's invested in our social doing well and everyone cares for it to do well. We just have to figure out the best way to go about it. How do you think about doing well? And what I mean by that is like, is it merely a case of view counts likes? Is it a case of conversions to subscribers? How do you determine the success of content and take talk today?
So our account, I think, first started off as just a brand awareness thing. Candidly, I didn't have the resources the time or with being remote to actually create video content. I was in my home, so I was like, all right, how do I get doing on to talk? I'm just going to start commenting. So start commenting on videos and those started gaining traction.
And I was like, all right, like people want to see something. And then we created videos. Now people had when they clicked on a comment, they had something to go back to on our feed. And short answer, one million views for us is like a viral video that is successful.
That is what is like written down as like green check, great job. But I feel like the real measure of success for me was when I noticed that people were referencing doling goes tick talk as like a home run machine or doling goes tick talk as like
things outside of like people who would normally care about doling go something that was really awesome tears like from our people team, like people were applying to work at doling go and like noting like art tick talk as the reason to be applying to work here.
And I think it's moments like that where it's like sure like we have our whole process for like converting users and doing all that fun stuff, but like the true mark of an iconic brand or like actually like making a difference is people are talking about you in their group chats. It's like one of the main things you hear about your brand.
And it's what people associate when they hear doling go and I think for me that was a success marker going on from that when we first started I didn't have any OK ours attached to it was more of just a test in their next experiment.
Now it's like one million views is considered a viral account. I mean a viral video. We have a how did you hear about a survey so now tick talk as part of that. So we have a viral video will actually see an uptick in users based off the timing of it and people saying yeah, we heard about you from tick talk. So those are ways that we actually measure success. But in my head, I feel like being part of cultures far more relevant and far more impactful for me when I think about success.
Yeah, what would you say to found it to a like I'm not sure about tick talk as a strategy because I just don't know if I don't actually convert to users. You might get a lot of follows you might get a lot of likes. But I don't know if you'll actually convert to paying uses. What would you say to them? I would kindly and candidly say does your happy earth day posts convert to users.
We all have or most brands have social teams that are doing things on social that why not do this like it feels like for us it's a still a very very low budget execution. Like we're not asking for thousands of dollars like candidly I would say about 95% of our impressions are completely organic. And they're for the cost of like maybe doos costume and like the sushi I had for dinner while like filming and like staying lay a little bit.
And I think for me it's like you can do things and be scrappy and still be iconic you don't have to be spending thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars to convert people like it's possible to do it by just hitting them where they get it. And that's also again certainly back to what I said earlier like that's how you know you've hit a cord with that human truth that it is true.
It's not just you saying what people think about your brand. It's the truth that connects it and that's kind of like the funnel that I've seen that if you have to create content. Why not make it entertaining why not make it something that people want to consume if innovation and all of this stuff could be bought it would have been bought by billionaires ages ago.
But the truth is is like a lack of money and lack of resources is what makes the creativity shine and I'm a true believer in this like any time we did well. And I remember my boss being like we might get more budget for this. I was like no like I don't want it and I genuinely believe that lack of money is what inspires creativity.
And I think the young and the poor have that in abundance. So that's probably why you see more innovation and stuff coming from younger people's because they have a lack of things. And for me that's what I found success in I know everyone has their own take on that but I would prefer less budget.
So we have I don't know half a million listens per show whatever it is now and a lot of people who listen want to do content and then go I don't know we're going to do an agency and this agency is blue tick. They are the best of the best and they you know 25 30 40 50 grand a month you know the agencies they are expensive. What would you advise them a weather agency whether not agency how to make it work.
I would say the best content is only going to be created by people who are champions of your brand and who have 110% attention to what you're doing and care about what you're doing. We have hired agencies I'll be honest when we first launched our TikTok we hired an agency to work with us before I was kind of in the weeds that I was just kind of like observing or whatever.
And the content didn't hit and it wasn't until an internal team like me took over that started to go more viral. I think the truth about it especially for Duolingo is like these people are not mission driven like they don't have that same drive that all of us did for why we're working at Duolingo they may be in their own mission but they're not a Duolingo's mission because they're spread out across different teams across different things.
And there's a certain connection that someone who works at a brand feels to their brand just as someone who works in agency probably feels to their agency and you can't recreate that very easily that has to be from someone within an internal. So my advice is pick up your phone download the app scroll in it for 10 minutes pick an audio and just start filming.
Glad we're aligned to that on agencies can I ask is it challenging for you internally if we're honest that when you have great success and you get 7 million followers and then I mean this nicely that like people want to interview you and you get a lot of followers and then your bosses and bosses are like I don't a minute I'm your boss and they're not asking to interview me is that a bit challenging.
While there are moments of course of frustration I think the frustration more is that we're just changing how things are done and what they're used to I don't think it's a matter of like jealousy or anger like what's going on it's more of just like growing pains of now we used to be this kind of not old school brand but a brand that kind of did more traditional stuff and now we're hold Montre is being social first.
So yeah when like a 25 year old comes in and changes that it's not going to be easy all the time there's going to be growing pains there's definitely like moments and there's tips and there's moments where I feel like I have to demand respect sometimes people may think that it just I got lucky and some super for my do think I got lucky and such you're for my thing I worked for that look.
Why do you think you're lucky okay so I grew up in a Muslim household and I always believed that everything has been given to me based off of like the situations you've been in and the blessings you have.
So that's like my personal thing if you look back at it like I grew up in a family that was wonderful and supporting I got to go to an awesome college I got internships after that like all of these were opportunities granted to me because of the access I had and I'm very adamant about it that like other people could achieve exactly what I did I just also happen to be in the right place at the right time and that is all about access and opportunity and I know that also on the scale of like I was also at a brand that allowed me to put it in the right place.
I was also at a brand that was okay with taking more risks than maybe a bigger brand might be so these are all things that kind of lined up for me and then where I stepped in a Zari where I'm proud of myself as I took advantage of what those things were there and how can I use this opportunity how can I use this access to make something great that's what the access I consider as like 20% luck and the other 80% is hard work indiligence but I think it could be replicated by anyone who's given the same opportunity and access.
Now that's really interesting because I was going to be my question instead about replication I don't think you're right. I've been trying to hire great social teams for years and weirdly there's this kind of strange thing which is like you hire amazing young people to get social and then the minute that you put the minute job they're like I'm thrilled to welcome Zari.
Who the fuck writes like that they talk like a company and so I find that not enough people are able to move from happy earth day to his dual E.P. and duo. How would you advise me on turning happy earth day into rock star creative imaginative person.
I would say you have to hire trouble makers I say that because I have been suspended before I have been on the hot seat many times well in university I remember in my interview I do a lingo when they asked if there are any questions you have I was like yeah if you could do a presentation for 10 minutes on anything that's not about work no notes what would it be and why.
And like questions that are just like things that are just unexpected I've been rejected from big brands for jobs and I was applying out of college because my resume I can set it to after this but it's definitely not a traditional resume it's very different it's unhinged and my whole like life mantra was like I'm going to be somewhere where I can just be Zaria and all corners of my life and all that I am and I'm going to take it and leave it and like I've gone rejected from like I remember I applied to Google rejected microsoft reject like it's fine like that happens because I wasn't meant to be there.
And trouble makers are the ones that are causing seismic cultural shifts like I believe they're the ones that press the red button when most of us are too scared to press it ourselves and I say this with my boss Michaela that I was talking about I remember I used to push her and I was like you just got a trust me and I'm just going to do it and if you're not okay with it will delete it but I'm going to do it and I remember being like I don't know and I was like send moments like that where you need people who are willing to keep pushing the boundaries and I get in trouble and it happens and I get messages from CEOs and I get into little thorny situations that we're going to do.
There's a lot of thorny situations that work it happens but also great work comes from it so I think it's it's what you choose to do with that. On trouble makers obvious and what I mean by that is we all know job interviews you come and you say you love Shakespeare and that you play tennis on the weekend and you hide the fact that you know maybe drink a kilo and dance to tell us with are they obvious when you interview and meet them.
I feel like I can tell because I would say our team is a team of trouble makers and I think it's because I grew up with that and I feel like it's more people who don't have traditional backgrounds and also people who are very upfront I stand people who are like I am who I am and I don't give a fuck if you like it or not and that is the energy I want and I know it sounds unaccommodating and stubborn.
I've been that way but also to a certain extent you need that energy to push things forward and I would also say trouble makers if you're looking for an easy pool to start a people who are pressing these red buns who are testing boundaries is people with intersectional backgrounds
and I'm very adamant about this because I grew up right in a Pakistani household in a very white city in America my entire life was figuring out how to balance both these cultures both these groups figure out how to please both because of that I'd find myself kind of push against up the wall sometimes but I also know how to manage that pressure and I'm always saying that people from intersectional backgrounds like they go through the most so they know how to handle the most.
Is it fructitious internally ever when you're pushing red buttons and doing posts do you ever get other functions being like can't do that we had this campaign lined up for next week we had this lined up we didn't plan on releasing that does it cause tension between functions.
Yeah it does candidly but I think that's natural I think tension is required for growth so I think the way that I approach it is like more of all right I know this caused you tend like tension let's talk about it like let me know about it
like I remember for example when threads was a thing for like 0.2 seconds we posted a photo of like Big Bird I remember what we said as the comment but it was like do a Big Bird or whatever and at the time we had a kids app and someone for the team was like yo like it's a kids app you can't post like I think it was something like us like sweating over Big Bird
but they're like you can't post that like they're from blah blah blah and I get these messages all the time I remember we've talked about making like a social media like thing where people can honestly say their issues what we're doing but I think that's okay I think those moments of discussion intention are important for people to understand social for understand what does well you have to have thick skin I know I've grown with the skin but it's important and I'm okay with it
couple of things that do you take down posts that don't do well sometimes people say oh it looks bad if you have the historical view and there's like some that are real duds do you take them down I think it depends like we have before if it's been like really freaking bad then yeah but I think it's more of a like a judgment on that but not not usually we kind of just keep it up
did you ever go through a trough of dissolution I remember with us we had like a period of a month or two where like none of our videos hit none and it was hard did you have that I feel like I'm going through that right now so I appreciate you saying that yeah it happens and I feel like the biggest thing is to not take it personally I think sometimes I think my ultra you go is literally a green bird and taking a step backward to be like no you are Zarya this is your 9 to 5 and it is okay if everything is not right now
I think that's been a very helpful way to kind of disconnect from it to what extent you find that real time is the most important and what I find by that mean by that is like if it's news it's got a much higher chance of hitting than like inspirational quote or wise piece of wisdom news is what hits I find yeah like a joke on Ryan Reynolds being a football game or a joke on newly
happened last week and now there's the video and here we go do you see what I mean yeah that definitely I think yeah cultural moments has had way more impact than like regular scheduled programming and we really try to adjust for that too like we have this saying with our social team that we have our calendar
is of like what we want to post what we're thinking of but everyone has a video card if they're like this is super relevant and needs to get out today I'm pulling my video card and those are things that we have in our team to make sure we're pushing out content that feels culturally relevant and feels like do is on top of the game.
That's so interesting I think we're shit is structuring all content planning how do you structure your content planning it's very Lucy Goosey the way we go about it is we know that social is very much dependent on trends
and never really plan more than like two weeks out and even two weeks is like a bit of a stretch and pretty much every Monday I go through the week and see like how many pieces of content we're thinking of doing and just Monday through Friday will assign people like all right Lily you're going to be doing two trending videos this week figure it out
you have this one campaign scheduled is it okay if it goes live on Wednesday XYZ and then say in the middle of the week all of a sudden Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey are trending OK Mal sorry we're not posting that we're posting about this tweet about this and I think the mindset is no one is too precious about what content they're creating everyone is just down to do whatever and do whatever will go viral so people are fine with pushing their stuff back or having to jump in and think of creative copy or just kind of work together to make viral moments happen
what do you think the hardest thing about content today like for me it's balancing that shit we can just copy what works and get pretty good hits or actually we can try and be different from be creative and maybe
for badly I think the hardest thing is as creative we're very personally attached to what we put out in the world and it's very hard to take critique it's very hard to like look back at ourselves and I think something that I'm going through right now is like like a lot of people like doling goes always been successful and like doling
goes this and that which is so true and it's so great but right now we're kind of in a rough patch like with our content like we're trying to figure out how to like go on YouTube shorts how to make things viral and being able to remove the personal and take the critical feedback and figure out ways to be innovative is a most tough thing for me like it feels like it's always like a goose chase or when you think you got it right you have to start from
score zero again and I think it's a very humbling feeling I think it keeps us nimble and I think it also keeps us empathetic to like being adjustable and adaptable which I think is the most important skill any human being can have but yeah I think it's that personal
attachment and being able to just like pivot is probably the hardest thing and he also like knowing who you are does that make sense like it's so easy to just copy or we both know them the ton of influences and we can all make it's like them I'm not being read is kind of easy to do yeah but that's not what you're doing is about I think that goes back to the dark star like language learning is hard so we make it fun and every piece of content will have some mention of that
and like I know a lot of people are like well I didn't see language learning in this do a leap of thirst trap and the way that we kind of approach that is the strategy that I love to call candy to the medicine where essentially the candy is going to be the do a leap of thirst trap but the medicine you might find it in the comment section you might find in the caption of us being like doing mentioning something about our app mentioning something about language
learning and fun and innovative ways so like for example the do a leap of thirst trap I remember one of our comments being like the only stuff you'll find on dolingo plus or like super dueling go and that is like all right like we just kind of plugged our premium app and now people are into it that's the medicine to the candy and I feel like that's a really important way of approaching content today.
Final one you said before about hey just download the app 10 seconds use it engage I agree for founders CEOs who think and want to engage with TikTok do they need someone dedicated to it as a channel or can it be Sarah who loves TikTok and it's just passionate about it. It should be Sarah who loves to talk and is passionate about it. Even if she's not in marketing or she's in a different space.
Yep 100% my dream is to hire a stand-up comedian for my team like candidly I think people who are removed from marketing who are removed from content creation who just exist and love the content for what it is are probably going to help your brand go further than those with specific marketing training and I believe the marketing training can be taught but that natural ideation machine that connects with video content sometimes just comes from someone who doesn't even know what marketing is.
Who are your favorite accounts? Okay on Twitter I love the New Jersey State Department and I think they have really funny tweets on TikTok. I love scrub daddy I'm a big scrub daddy stand but we also do like a lot of content with them so I just like that's why we've done content with them just because I love what they do and then in general like just fun content but not necessarily on TikTok but is more long form is liquid death. I just I love liquid death.
I think they've done such a good job and totally agree with you that. I also love the what I eat in the days you know this one. I don't get enough of what I know what I know I know you don't. Wow. I always I always manage to my mother like wow. Yeah that and recipes I love watching I never could I just watch people. Listen we're all the same boat I love streamers I think it's funny watching people play I just think it's so funny to me and I don't know why.
I don't game I don't do any of it but just the concept that somebody could be engaged with me playing a game like that to me is just wild but what do you think your brand like my national timeless elegant crosses geographies incredible what's your favorite brand. You know if I'm being so honest with you I don't really care about brands like I admire a brand like that I love Ghani because I love their clothes I love Costco because I love shopping there but it's more of like stuff like that
I don't think and as a marketing person I feel like I know I should have a perspective on that but I think for me it's like I just love people who make great work and I think not one brand has nailed that every time and time again I think we all kind of bring our own pieces of that forward. Costco is one that I was not expecting as much cheaper than Chanel though so like well done I want to move into a quick fire so I say short statement you give me your immediate thoughts does that sound okay.
Yeah let's do it. So tell me which company social in terms of like B2B or like startup company to most respect on social could be across anything be like they've done a good job. Scrub Daddy. Is it harder or easier now to win at social and content harder why is it harder because the tools of that but it's harder to be found I think everyone's jumped on the bandwagon now so standing out is getting tougher and tougher what worries you most today about social and content.
Candidly I worry about tick tock being banned content wise I worry that I'll not be able to come up with more like content that lives beyond a trend if that makes sense does it need to I think at times I feel it does I feel that's what will distinguish you
between a trend when tick tock becomes irrelevant of how can you translate it across and so story lines I think stressed me out of like what is actually hitting the court with people that's a story line that they can resonate with and understand. Do you measure cross promotion so million views on a tick tock you measure the impact that has on Instagram following or YouTube or not so much in terms of that cross promotion.
We have it seen direct correlation if I'm being honest I would say more of like a one million view thing on tick tock might actually more correlation would like app downloads but it kind of stays within its own little realm we used to see people on Twitter they would repost tick tocks that we would have and then we'd see some more followers on Twitter but Twitter is kind of gone to shit.
So since then are you seeing LinkedIn just like spike in terms of engagement I actually stand LinkedIn I love LinkedIn but I use it more for like my personal stuff than I would actually for doling go but I also yeah hot take Gen Z is showing up more on LinkedIn so I believe what not engagement is through the roof.
I feel like what do you want to be in such a like job and a few questions but like trouble make it on why would you just be in ten years time I would like to be working on nine to five and a stagnant and I'm saying that because I feel like there's this pressure for us to constantly grow into dream to be a CMO and to dream to keep going bigger and bigger but I want to be in a place where I'm happy where I have a good work life balance and I'm going to be a good job.
I want my life balance and my work is not my life. No, no, that's a hot take. I personally have no ambitions of being a CMO or like going higher I'm content and happy where I am.
Do you know what feel the need to like the next thing I don't understand that like when you're on the treadmill you're on the treadmill, no. I feel like my value of where I enjoy and love doing things does not come from work and being on the treadmill of life feels more of doing stuff for my personal benefit and personal gain and like things that enlighten me and like I'm happy like I'm okay with where I'm at and I feel like maybe in five years that'll change
maybe I'll want to grow more but like I'm okay just existing and being and that is my mantra right now So I don't have any crazy ambitions for the 10 years. Maybe I'll be retired. That's my dream. My dream is to be retired Listen, I've loved doing this. I think it's probably the best answer that I've ever had and the most honest to where we've got to be in 10 years and normally it's very different but this has been amazing. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks for having me
As a complete content nerd, I just absolutely love doing that show. It's incredible to see what Zuri has done by scaling Juelingos TikTok to where I just to say if you want to see more behind the scenes of course you can on YouTube by searching for 20VC but before we leave you today did you know Oli Pop took their sales from 3 million to 200 million by doubling down on video but wow it is expensive to do well and it takes a
shitload of time that was until captions came into the world. Honestly, captions is one of my favorite tools. I use it here at 20VC all the time because it makes creating videos so easy and simple. They have the most incredible array of tools from advanced captioning which I use for all the videos we do to revolutionary dubbing tools allowing teams to take one ad and repurpose it even into multiple languages
mean Spanish it's a masterpiece those are my words other people's probably think differently you can also automatically cut out pauses add relevant zooms and generate custom royalty free music and more
all with just a tap captions is used by over 5 million people and businesses and it's the best try it out now at captions.ai and speaking of game changing tools like captions there we could not live without mirror 20VC is it just me or the project so quickly become disorganized cluttered information
all over the place and that's where mirror comes in mirror streamlines workflows organizes information and it allows the team to just align in seconds how do we use it at 20VC or for every show we take 10 references per guest that's about 40 pages of notes per show simple right not really
it's taken across several different formats it could be email cool WhatsApp i message or mirror is our home for all of this content and data now I find that information with ease all in one mirror board one mirror board per guest it's so simple and so much time and energy is saved by
doing this and the team wise better as they can see what each other has added to the board it's a total game changer so find simplicity in your most complex projects with mirror your first three boards are free when you sign up to stay at mirror.com forward slash podcast that's three free boards at mirror.com slash podcast as always I so appreciate all your support stay tuned for a fantastic episode this coming Monday with Adam Fisher general partner at Bessam avancher partners