How To Make A Killer 2-Step Post (to get more traffic to your Skool Community)

Nick Maier

2d ago in Strategy

@Harut Martirosyan

used this to get hundreds of quality leads, thousands of dollars in sales, and 7,000 followers on x …

@Max Perzon

got 61.5k views …

@Andrew Kirby

got 253 comments …

… and it’s proven itself again and again to be a banger way to drive a tonne of great quality traffic to your skool community

the simple 2-step post works. and this is how you make it work

broken down, what it’s doing is:

you’re sharing a free resource (of insanely high value) IF someone does xyz on the post

this works great for a few reasons 👇

(a) anyone who does xyz has segmented themselves in the “i want what you have” pipeline and has become a warm lead

(b) it naturally plays with the social platforms algorithm - the more engagement, the more organic views it gets - and this in turn becomes a flywheel

… more people see it … more people do xyz … it gets more social proof … more people see it … more people do xyz … and so on

the hard truth to swallow is that it doesn’t always work

that's the caveat

it's not a secret solution that guarantees results

yet it is one of the most powerful tools you can use to drive traffic to your skool community

i observe the reason it worked for harut, max, and andrew is they already had a larger following to share it with originally

this larger original audience gave it more “surface area” to get traction and momentum on

think of it like a runway … they had a bigger runway (following), so there was better chance for the plane (post) to be able to take off

that’s not to say it won’t work for you if you have a smaller audience (<1,000)

it can, and it will, it may just take more iterations and attempts

(there’s a way to bypass this. and i’ll touch on it soon)

let’s take a look at the post itself

it’s incredibly short
there are only three sentences - the hook, the secret, the action

here’s an example

"this company had a $1.2m launch in less 24 hours

what’s crazy is they did it with an audience of less than 3,000 people. and it’s all because of the incredibly simple launch strategy they used, and you can copy

want it? like + comment “launch” below, and i‘ll DM you the entire case study for free"

it’s not much room to work with

all that means is you need to be very intention about the words you use

every word NOT working for you is working against you

the hook must act like a proclamation

it has to “pattern interrupt” people as they scroll

the constant theme I see in all the top 2-step posts across social platforms is the hooks include some kind of number

it could be a statistic, revenue/sales made, a number of people

anything … but it must be a number of something your ideal client cares about

MRR, weight lost, muscle gained, length of their relationship, etc

the secret must revolve around an outcome your ideal clients want

“he did it with raw, unedited videos”

“... and now i make $x/mo without selling my time”

“she did it without a gym membership and exercising just twice a week”

the action must involve a “comment” and one other action

it could be like, follow, save, or share …

… you can choose whichever the platform is favouring at the moment

my preference is “like” as it’s the one with the least friction

and because they’ve engaged with the post you can retarget them at a later date with ads

you must be super simple, clear, and straightforward in letting them know exactly what it is they’re getting

you're implying they're getting it immediately and there's almost NO effort involved on their part (just hit two buttons and type a word)

“i’ll DM you the entire case study for free”

“i’ll DM you a private invite” (private makes it seem more exclusive and valuable)

“i’ll DM you my full $5,000 course for free” (adding the $ makes it seem more valuable)

the image must POINT to something that’s aligned with your hook and secret

raw, real images work the best

what happens next is the “second step”

they comment the word you chose and an autoresponder DM’s them what you promised

on x you’d use tweethunter
on ig you’d use manychat
on fb you’d use their internal business suite
on linkedin you need to manually DM people (for now)

you set up a super simple response that delivers what you promised

“hey [name]

here is the XYZ - link

[sign off]”

don’t ask a question here

it only adds friction and gives the reader a second action

we want them to focus on one thing - consuming the freebie

and if you’ve done it right, inside the freebie you’ll have:

strategically placed promotions for your free community without mentioning the community

“if you want to see how this applies to your xyz, check this out” (and link to your community)

“if you want to dive deeper and get an even better look at xyz and how it can apply to your biz/body/life, check this out” (and link to your community)

included a section where you say “once you’ve read/watched this, DM me “this word” and i’ll [insert promise]

you can put this at the start … “make sure to watch/read to the very end as i’ve got an exclusive gift for you if you do”

you can put it at the end “because you made it all the way through, i have an exclusive gift for you”

from here you can direct them to a “call” or whatever tool you use to get people into your paid offers on this call, if they don’t act, you can downsell them the free community

what this does is

(a) drives traffic to your free community without even mentioning the free community

(b) segments people who respond with the new “word” as a higher quality lead as they’ve consumed the freebie and taken action again

… what if you want to pour gasoline on the fire?

you have two options

first, no matter what the thing is you’re promising them you house it inside your free community

this way, when you setup the auto DM, you’re sending them your community link and getting traffic to your about page

the thing to watch here if you want to maximise conversions is your about page needs to be setup in a way that the person visiting it can immediately see the free resource they wanted is there

they should be able to see that it’s available for them AND ALSO a whole heap of other value too

this works great for free communities when you have the first image as the resource with some kind of “access xyz for free inside now (and get $xyz worth of other abc resources too)”

secondly, you can boost your 2-step post and get insane reach from it

this is what i’d recommend doing if your audience isn’t very big

just $10/day can go a long way and get you thousands of views

if you’ve nailed your hook, secret, and action it’ll drive a ton of leads for you too

lastly, you run ads to retarget people who:

engaged with the post
visited the page that had your “freebie” on it (a youtube link, a pdf url, a lander w/ immediate download)
visited your about page

… and you exclude anyone who is already inside your community using the “exclusion” filter when creating custom audiences

there you go - that’s how you master the 2-step post to get more (and better) traffic to your skool community

TL;DR

create a short, impactful post with three parts

hook: use a striking number or statistic to grab attention (e.g., "$1.2m launch within 24 hours")
secret: highlight a desirable outcome for your audience (e.g., "did it with an audience of less than 3,000 people")
action: ask for a comment with a specific word and one other engagement (like, follow, etc.)

set up an autoresponder

use platform-specific tools (tweethunter for x, manychat for instagram)
automatically DM the promised content when someone comments
keep the initial message simple and focused on delivering the freebie

in the free content

include subtle promotions for your community without directly mentioning it
add a call-to-action for further engagement (e.g., "DM me 'this word' for an exclusive gift")

optional enhancements

house the free content inside your community to drive direct traffic
boost the post with ads to increase reach, especially effective for smaller audiences
retarget engaged users with additional ads to maximise conversion

key points:

works on various social media platforms - x, instagram, facebook, and linkedin (there is no auto DM tech tool for li that i’ve yet seen, so you’ll need to message manually if choosing it)
more effective with larger initial audiences, but can work for smaller ones with persistence and paid ads
success depends on crafting compelling hooks, valuable secrets, and clear calls-to-action
the method creates a "flywheel" effect: more engagement leads to more visibility, which leads to more engagement
can be used to segment warm leads and build a targeted audience for future marketing efforts

hope you found this educational content valuable

nick

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