Navbar

July 17, 2023

Module 2 — Lesson 10

With the Navbar, you can customize (and maximize) your beehiiv website.

What do I mean?

Let’s take a look at two examples:

Notice the difference?

The Navbar allows you to personalize your beehiiv website.

You can:

  • Plug your offers

  • Create an About page

  • Categorize your posts by topic

  • Cross-promote other websites (Your social media links, podcast, e-commerce store, you name it)

Simply:

  • Go to Settings → Website → Navbar

Here’s a quick video walking you through the details:

How to Create Content Tags

Content tags allow you as the writer to categorize your posts to help readers more easily search for a specific newsletter edition.

For example, let’s say you write about personal finance, career advice, and traveling. You can create content tags for each of those topics.

If your reader just wants to read your career advice content, they can click the career advice content tag to find only your career advice posts.

What does this unlock?

Stick with me for a moment. Let’s say you wanted to create a course within the beehiiv platform. How would you do it?

  1. Create a new publication as the course

  2. Each post would be an individual lesson

  3. Create content tags to group lessons by module (module 1, module 2, etc.)

  4. Gate content so only paying subscribers can see your content (more on this later)

Hmm… feel familiar? Oh wait, yeah that’s how beehiiv 101 was created. 😉

How do you create content tags? Simply head on over to…

Write → Content Tags → Create Content Tag

Bada bing bada boom. There you have it!

Custom Pages On The Navbar

We already covered 7 possible use cases for custom pages (If you need a quick refresher, you can review them here).

Now I want to go one step further and do a full deep-dive on Jack Raines’ (Writer & Founder of Young Money) About page because it’s the best I’ve seen by far:

1) Capture attention with an image

Just like anything else you write, you have 3-seconds to capture your readers’ attention. An image is a great way to:

  1. Stop people in their tracks

  2. Show people what a cutie you are 🙂

2) Preview your main points

Give a brief rundown of what you’ll be sharing on your About page.

(Especially if you happen to write a long one)

3) Describe your backstory

Your readers subconsciously ask three main questions:

  1. Who is this person?

  2. Where have they come from?

  3. Why should I listen to them?

When you write your backstory, try to answer those questions.

4) Explain what you write about

For new visitors, they’ll want to know what you write about and what they should read first.

Share your unique value proposition and favorite newsletter editions.

5) Preview your master plan

People love following people on missions.

  • What are your current goals?

  • Why do you do what you do?

  • What are you striving for?

Let’s face it: Interesting people who live interesting lives tend to write interesting content.

6) Answer FAQs

Do you get asked the same questions over and over again?

Your about page is great for writing your answers down once, and being able to send your about page to hundreds of thousands of people.

Write once → Use many.

💡 Pro Tip: Subtly plug a few of your offers where relevant.

7) Be unapologetically you

Be you! The tips above worked well for Jack. Will they work for you? Maybe.

But the most important part is to share parts of yourself you normally aren’t able to in your newsletters. Your readers don’t want another Jack Raines. They want YOU!

So try these tips out, double down on what works, reject what doesn’t, and add what’s uniquely your own.

P.S. If you create a custom standalone page and don’t choose to add it to your Navbar, only people with the link to that page will be able to see it. Are you starting to see all the possibilities this opens up? #beehiivcoursescomingsoon? 👀

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