How to choose a trigger keyword that actually fires
A comment-to-DM funnel has exactly one entry condition: somebody types a particular word. Everything downstream - the DM, the qualification, the booking link, the CRM record - is unreachable if that word is wrong. It is the cheapest decision in the funnel to change and the most expensive one to get wrong, because a bad keyword fails silently.
One keyword per post
The most common mistake is offering two. "Comment PRICE for the cost or DEMO to see it" feels like it covers more intent. What it actually does is halve the volume behind each branch, make the public reply ambiguous, and destroy your ability to read the result - when a post underperforms you can no longer tell whether the offer was wrong or the split was.
One keyword per post, one funnel per keyword. If you genuinely need two paths, that is a question the funnel asks in the DM, where it costs the reader nothing and you keep the attribution.
Pick a word that does not occur naturally
The keyword has to be rare in your own comment section. This sounds obvious and is routinely ignored, because the tempting words are exactly the common ones.
- Safe: PRICE, LINK, GUIDE, INFO, TEMPLATE, CHECKLIST, DOWNLOAD. Single words, unambiguous, and nobody types them by accident.
- Unsafe: anything that appears in ordinary praise or conversation - "yes", "this", "want", "me", "love". These fire the funnel at people who were paying you a compliment, which is a worse outcome than not firing at all.
- Also unsafe: anything with two spellings. If half your audience types "colour" and half "color", half your funnel does not run and you will never see the half that did not.
Name the thing they get, not the topic
GUIDE and CHECKLIST work because they describe what lands in the inbox. SCALE and GROWTH describe what the post was about, which the reader already knows, and leave them guessing about what commenting will actually do.
The keyword is a request the reader is making on their own behalf. Word it as the thing they are asking for.
This also sets up the opening DM. If the keyword was GUIDE, the first message has an obvious job and an obvious tone. If it was SCALE, the first message has to start by establishing what is even happening.
Say it out loud
On any video format, the trigger has to be spoken, not only written. A keyword that appears solely in the caption or description reaches the fraction of viewers who read it; one said out loud in the video reaches everyone watching, and produces substantially more triggered comments as a result.
Put it in both places, phrased as an instruction with the outcome attached: "Comment CHECKLIST below and I'll send you the full list." Instruction, keyword, outcome. That sentence is doing more work for the funnel than any other single thing you can change.
Do not recycle a keyword across different offers
The keyword routes a commenter into a specific set of qualifying questions and a specific destination. Reusing PRICE across three posts selling three different things sends everyone down whichever funnel was wired to it, and the mismatch shows up in the second message when the AI asks something that makes no sense for what they commented on.
Reuse a keyword only where it should genuinely run the same funnel - a series of posts about one offer, for instance. Otherwise a new offer gets a new word.
The failure is silent, so go and check
A keyword that never fires produces no error. The post looks fine, the comments look fine, and the funnel simply reports nothing - which is indistinguishable from a post that did not land. This is why the keyword deserves more scrutiny than its size suggests.
Test it the way a viewer would: comment the keyword yourself from a personal account and watch what arrives. It takes a minute and it is the only check that exercises the real path end to end.
Frequently asked questions
One. Multiple keywords on the same post make the DM response ambiguous for the viewer and split the analytics, so you can no longer tell which one worked. One keyword per post, one funnel per keyword.
A single word, easy to spell, and unlikely to appear in ordinary comments. PRICE, LINK, GUIDE and INFO all work. Anything you would find in a normal reply - "love", "yes", "this" - will fire the funnel at people who never asked for it.
The action. GUIDE tells someone exactly what arrives; SCALE describes a topic and leaves them guessing. The keyword is a request the reader is making, so it should name the thing they will receive.
In the caption, spelled out as an instruction - "Comment PRICE and I'll send the details." On video, say it out loud as well. Spoken triggers produce far more comments than ones that only appear in the description.
Only if it should run the same funnel. The keyword is what routes a commenter to a set of questions and a destination, so reusing one across posts with different offers sends people down a funnel written for something else.