What Your Brand Can Learn From WORDLE | Step Up Your Social Ep 19

If you use the internet, you’ve likely heard of WORDLE.
According to Buzzfeed, there have been nearly 2 million tweets mentioning “WORDLE” since November of 2021.
But here’s the thing: this game, that so many people play and talk about, had only 90 users in November. Not 90 thousand… 90.
How did this viral phenomenon happen and what can we as digital marketers learn from it? A lot!

Listen to the full episode here or wherever you stream podcasts. And scroll down for a full episode transcript.

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If you use the internet, you’ve likely heard of WORDLE.

If not, here’s a quick primer: It’s a VERY simple word game where you have to figure out the five-letter word of the day. You start with no information. When you guess a word, each letter will turn one of 3 colors. Grey means that letters NOT in the word. Yellow(ish) means that letter is in the word, but not in the right place. Green means the letter is in the word and in the right place. You get 6 tries. That’s it. That’s what all the hubbub is about.

I personally LOVE word games. I feel like WORDLE was made for me. But it was not – literally hundreds of thousands of people play WORDLE every single day.

According to Buzzfeed, there have been nearly 2 million tweets mentioning “WORDLE” since November of 2021.

But here’s the thing: this game, that so many people play and talk about, had only 90 users in November. Not 90 thousand… 90.

The game was created by Josh Wardle (really). He’s a software engineer in Brooklyn and he created it for his partner. But it was too good not to share, so it made its way around the family. On Nov 1, it was played by 90 people. But those 90 people loved it. Enough to become ambassadors for the game. So they told their friends who told their friends and here we are.

No one is getting paid to promote WORDLE (the creator has opted to not even monetize the game for himself!). People just love it so much they want to spread the word.

So why are we talking about a viral word game on a podcast about social media and digital marketing? Because there is A LOT we can learn from this simple word game.

So let’s dig in.

First of all – it’s simple. Like silly simple. I explained how to play in about 20 seconds above. The game’s instructions are only 82 words long. If you can spell (in English), you can play WORDLE.

Mr. Wardle could have based the game around 7 letter words. Even 6 letters words would have probably made some linguists feel very good about themselves (or bad I suppose). But by keeping it simple, he ensured that anyone can play, regardless of how much time they’ve spent reading the dictionary.

Along with being simple, the game is also extremely limited. Had he wanted to monetize, the creator would have let you play as many words a day as you wanted… in exchange for either money or at the least watching ads.

Instead, there’s one word a day. Play it… or don’t.

But if you don’t, you can’t go back. Whether he meant to or not, the creator developed a game with FOMO baked right in. If you miss today’s WORDLE, you miss today’s WORDLE. You can’t get to it tomorrow.

Now as a brand looking to make money, you might roll your eyes and say “great that he can afford to create free content, but I need to get paid.” Fair enough. But here’s the thing – great content creates trust. And loyalty. There’s literally a name for creating great content as a way to reach your customers. It’s called Content Marketing. And you know what – content marketing is amazing. I built my business on it. As have so many others.

And should Mr. Wardle decide to sell official WORDLE merch, or launch a new game, or maybe start a newsletter about internet virality, he’s developed a massive community of people who will trust that his future content is going to be amazing. Will they all kick in or subscribe – of course not! But he’s filled his funnel immensely with people who love his content. If even 1% of daily players supported his next endeavor, we’ll let’s just say he could probably quit his day job if he wanted to.

Imagine if he’d gone the other way – shoving as many ads as he could onto the page, and making you sit through an annoying popup video just to get to the game? Would folks still play? For some – yes (it really is a great game). But he’d probably lose a ton of daily average users. And you better believe folks are going to be less likely to serve as ambassadors for the game – why should someone go out of their way to tell their friends to play a game that looks spammy and is rife with ads. Maybe they’d tell their nerdiest friends. But virality isn’t about one person telling another person. It’s about one person telling lots of people. Exponentially. WORDLE is fun, but also clean and easy. Onboarding is seamless – why not help spread the word?!

Now if Mr. Wardle had asked me for advice when getting started, I would have recommend giving people the option of creating an account. This would have given you the ability to back and forth between desktop and mobile while keeping your stats in order. And he could have even reminded you to come back if you had missed a few days.

But here’s the thing – people don’t need a reminder to do something that they love. Which should serve as a huge lesson for your digital program. Telling people you’re doing a thing is fine. Having them waiting anxiously for you to do your thing – we’ll, let’s just say that’s way better!

What kind of content could you create that your audience would be waiting around to access. I don’t know what the answer is to that question – but figure it out and this is going to be a great year for you and your brand!

Now I mentioned we don’t need regular reminders to do the WORDLE because we just want to do it. BUT it’s hard to log on to any social media channel these days and not be almost inundated with reminders to play.

And that’s because the creator did something truly brilliant: he made sharing your score literally as easy as possible.

Like Spotify Wrapped before him, he didn’t embed a “tweet now” button on the game that brings up a complicated pop-up with awful formatting. Rather, after completing a round, you see the following: your personal statistics, a countdown clock to the next WORDLE and a big green button that simply says “Share.” When you click it, it doesn’t open anything you have to edit and deal with. It simple copies your results to your clipboard. You can now paste them anywhere you want (Twitter of course, or Facebook, but also a private text message or an ongoing email chain with old friends). They’re your results to share how you see fit. While I haven’t run focus groups, I can all but guarantee that this ease of use is a huge component of why people are constantly talking about this game online.

One thing worth noting: when you share your results, Mr. Wardle was smart enough to not show the actual words you used, simply the colored boxes you got and how many chances it took you to solve today’s WORDLE. Anything more would have killed the game in its tracks early on. Because everyone hates a spoiler, but people love to show off their results. His solution was brilliant in its simplicity.

So what are you doing to make your audience’s relationship with you easy to share. Do you have a hashtag on your packaging materials with a call-to-action to tag you on social? Do you have fun things up in your physical space that visitors are going to want to take pictures of and share on social? Do you provide regular content on your social channels, website, newsletter or elsewhere that doesn’t try to sell your product, but simply adds values to the lives of your intended audience?

Add value – often and for free. And people will be excited to tell their friends about you.

If you haven’t yet tried the WORDLE, head to nytimes.com/games/wordle (you can find the link in this episode’s show notes at stepupyoursocial.com). Be sure to tag Reverbal Communications when sharing your results. We’d love to see them!

And when you’re done mastering today’s WORDLE, think about what you and your brand can give to the world that will get millions of people talking about you on social media.