A welcome post has one job: get the new member to write something, once, in the first day or two. Not to orient them, not to explain your rules, not to tell them your story. Just to convert a silent join into a first comment, because a member who has commented once behaves completely differently from one who never has.
Why does nobody reply to my welcome post?
Welcome posts get ignored because they read as a broadcast: they talk about the community rather than to the person who just joined, and they end with something like "excited to have you here", which is warm and gives the reader absolutely nothing to do.
The second failure is volume. A new member's curiosity lasts about a minute. A post containing your origin story, nine links, a rules section and a video is not read; it is scanned and closed. Everything you cram in beyond the first ask reduces the chance of the first ask being answered.
The same principle that governs every other post applies here, just with higher stakes because it is the first impression — see Skool post ideas that get comments for the general version.
What does my welcome post actually need in it?
A welcome post needs exactly three things, and everything beyond them lowers the odds of a first comment.
- One place to start. Not five. New members do not need a map, they need a first step. "Watch this one video" or "read this one post" beats a tour of every module.
- One easy question. Answerable in a sentence, with no way to look stupid. "Where are you writing from and what are you working on?" works. "What are your goals for this community?" does not — it makes people draft an essay in their head and abandon it.
- Visible proof a human replies. If existing intro comments have no reply from you, new members read that and correctly conclude nobody is home. Reply to every introduction, even if it is one line.
Everything else — your story, the rules, the upsell — belongs somewhere other than the welcome post.
Can I just copy a welcome post that already works?
You can copy any of the five welcome posts below straight into your community, provided you adapt the specifics, because the structure is the part that matters.
1. The classic pinned welcome — for most communities
Use this as your pinned welcome post if you have nothing right now. It is the safest default.
Welcome — start here.
Glad you made it in. Here is the fastest way to get value out of this place.
Step 1. Watch the 6-minute orientation in Classroom. It explains how everything is organised and what to ignore.
Step 2. Comment below with two things: where you are writing from, and the one thing you are trying to fix in the next 90 days. One sentence each is plenty.
Step 3. Reply to one other person's introduction. That is genuinely it — the people who get the most out of this are the ones who talk to two or three others in their first week.
I read and reply to every introduction personally, so say hello and I will point you at whatever is most relevant to what you are working on.
2. The short and personal one — for small or new communities
Under 200 members, where you can still greet everyone individually. Lower promise, higher warmth.
Hey — welcome in.
This is still a small room, which means you will actually get answers from me rather than from a bot or a moderator. Use that while it lasts.
Two things to do now: introduce yourself below in a sentence or two, and post the thing you are currently stuck on. Doesn't matter how small or how obvious it feels. Half the value here is finding out that six other people are stuck on the same thing.
If you would rather not post publicly yet, message me directly and I will point you somewhere useful.
3. The paid-community welcome — for anyone charging for access
When people have paid, the first 48 hours are where refunds get decided. This one front-loads a quick win.
You're in. Here's how to get your money back in the first week.
Not literally — I mean here is the fastest route to something that pays for the membership.
Do this today: open the Quick Wins module and complete the first exercise. It takes about 25 minutes and it is the single thing most members say made the difference in their first month.
Then post below with: what you do, and what result you want by the end of the month. Be specific — "more clients" is hard to help with, "three more clients at my new rate" is not.
I will reply to every one of these with a specific next step. If you get stuck at any point, post in the community rather than sitting on it. Nobody here minds a beginner question, and the ones who ask early are consistently the ones who finish.
4. The rules-and-culture welcome — for larger or busier communities
Once you have enough members that behaviour needs shaping, you need a version that sets norms without reading like a terms-of-service page.
Welcome. Three things about how this place works.
One — we help before we pitch. Comment on other people's posts before you post about your own thing. Self-promo without contribution gets removed, and honestly it does not work anyway.
Two — specific questions get specific answers. "How do I grow?" will get you nothing. "Here is my landing page, the headline is not converting, what would you change?" will get you five useful replies within a day.
Three — post your wins. Especially small ones. Somebody behind you needs to see that the boring first step actually leads somewhere.
Now introduce yourself below: name, what you do, and one thing you are working on this month. I will point you at the right people.
5. The re-welcome — for members who joined and went quiet
Not for new joins. This is the post you write when you notice a group of members joined a month ago and never said anything.
A quiet re-introduction thread, for everyone who joined and never got round to saying hello.
No judgement at all — I have joined plenty of communities and lurked for six months. But if you joined a while back and never posted, this thread is yours.
One sentence is enough: what you are working on right now. That's the whole ask.
If it has been long enough that you have forgotten what is in here, say so and I will send you the three things actually worth your time this month.
The re-welcome works better than most owners expect, because the barrier for a long-time lurker is embarrassment about having been silent, and this post explicitly removes that. If you want to go further with the same group, how to activate Skool lurkers covers it properly.
How do I welcome the members who never come back?
Members who never return need a direct follow-up message, because a pinned welcome post only catches people who visit the community page and misses everyone who joined, got a notification, and never came back — a large share of new members in most communities.
That is what the direct follow-up is for, and it is worth doing by hand for the first few dozen members so you learn what people actually reply to. Past that, it becomes the thing that quietly slips.
Skoolgrades handles this without turning it into a mass mailout. Compose has a welcome recipe, one of eight (welcome, leaderboard shoutout, recognise commenters, milestone, fun, repost, clone a post that worked elsewhere, and freeform), each producing a finished draft with one-click copyable @mention tags. For the direct version, Targets builds a list of recent joiners, DM Broadcast drafts a message for that list either verbatim or personalised per member, you review and approve every single draft, and you send from the extension panel one member at a time with one human click each.
It is deliberately not automated. An auto-DM blast is how owners get flagged and how members learn to ignore the inbox, and a welcome message that obviously went to two hundred people is worse than no welcome message at all. Send limits are twenty-five a day and one hundred a month on Grow, and twenty-five a day and five hundred a month on Pro. One genuine constraint: you can only message members you already have a DM channel with.
What should I leave out of a welcome post?
Leave four things out of your welcome post, all of which feel obligatory to an owner and are not:
- Your full story. It belongs in a separate post, or in the Classroom. New members do not care yet, and that is reasonable.
- The complete rules. Two or three norms, stated as culture rather than law, is the most anyone absorbs on day one.
- Every resource link. One link. Nine links produce zero clicks.
- An upsell. A welcome post that pitches something teaches the member that the community is a funnel. If there is a next product, mention it after they have had a win, not before.
The other thing that quietly matters is whether the community they land in looks alive. A perfect welcome post into a room whose last comment was eleven days ago will not save the join — that is a different and more important problem, covered in why is my Skool community so quiet.
What welcome post mistakes should I avoid?
Three mistakes account for most dead welcome threads, and all three are cheap to fix.
- Asking for goals. Too big a question. Ask what they are working on this week instead.
- Listing every resource. A new member with nine links clicks zero. One link, one step.
- Not replying. A welcome thread full of introductions with no owner replies actively teaches members that posting here is pointless. If you only have ten minutes, spend it replying rather than writing a better post.