How did Hell Gate add that cool banner?!

Let’s pretend it’s election night in a city that’s about to throw out an overfunded establishment candidate. You’re getting ready to livestream your coverage of the results.

And you think…wouldn’t it be great if we could plug this all over our website?

BUT HOW? You want to make sure no one coming to your site will miss that you’re doing something big. You know it needs to be loud and obvious to get noticed but you don’t want to go in and edit hundreds of pages and posts to promote it.

Enter Outpost.

Outpost has a smart call to action system that allows you to add pop-ups and action blocks across your entire website in ONE PUBLISH.

You can do all kinds of great stuff with Outpost’s CTAs. Plug livestreams and events. Get more people on your newsletter. Promote your subscriptions. Encourage upgrades from monthly to annual.

Hell Gate used Outpost last night to add a giant announcement bar across their site, letting readers know they were going live with election night commentary for NYC.

Today, I’m sharing how they did that along with three ways you can use Outpost’s autodisplay actions to grow your list and make more reader revenue.

P.S. TOMORROW, Outpost is joining us live to show off this CTA feature and if you have questions about call to actions or want to get personalized advice, you should come. It’s free. Register to join us ↗️ 

Tip 1: Grow your list with newsletter slide ups

Why do this: To get casual readers who are browsing your website to actually join your newsletter. You think people are pouring over your links for an hour but truly they’re looking for mere seconds at an article. If you don’t make that newsletter super obvious, they will bounce without seeing it AND THEY MAY NEVER RETURN 😱 

What it looks like: The bottom slider latches on to the bottom of the browser window and slides up on a delay or on scroll depth. You decide. You can customize colors, text and add a featured image.

How to set it up:

1. Inside Outpost, go to CTAs → Autodisplay

2. Scroll down to Bottom Slide Up Slot

3. Have a look at the default CTA that Outpost has already loaded in there for you and customize the design and text how you want it (click “Edit CTA” or “Preview”)

4. Save your changes as Save Minor Change

5. Set the Display to delay after page load or show on scroll depth

6. Flip the Off/On button

7. Head to your website (incognito mode) and see it load up!

Tip 2: Promote your subscription with in post actions

Why do this: If someone is reading your post, they are a potential new subscriber. They also may not be on your mailing list so they could miss upgrade promotions you put there. Make sure they know they can subscribe (or donate) with an in-post call to action.

What it looks like: You can slot these in anywhere inside a post—top, bottom, or middle. They are fully customizable with text, colors and images too.

How to set it up:

1. Inside Outpost, go to CTAs → Autodisplay

2. Scroll down to the In-Post Slots and choose which slot you want to use (I recommend In-Post Slot 2 for this)

3. Have a look at the default CTA that Outpost has already loaded in there for you and customize the design and text how you want it (click “Edit CTA” or “Preview”)

4. Save your changes as Save Minor Change

5. Adjust how many paragraphs down you want your CTA (I’d say 3-5)

6. Flip the Off/On button

7. Head to your website (incognito mode) and see it load up!

You might also want to clone this for the Free audience too!

Tip 3: Get monthly subscribers switching to annual with in post actions

Why do this: This is one of the easiest ways to make more money and reduce churn. Get more of your monthly subscribers onto annual plans.

What it looks like: Same as above, you can slot this in anywhere inside an article. I recommend towards the bottom. You can also customize colors, text and images.

How to set it up:

1. Inside Outpost, go to CTAs → Autodisplay

2. Scroll down to the In-Post Slots and choose which slot you want to use (I recommend In-Post Slot 3 for this)

3. Turn off the Unknown CTA and instead go to Monthly

4. Press Select and browse the library for something close to what you want

5. Customize the design and text how you want it (click “Edit CTA” or “Preview”)

6. Save your changes as Save Minor Change

7. Adjust how many paragraphs down you want your CTA (I’d say bottom of post or 1-2 paragraphs from bottom)

8. Flip the Off/On button

9. Head to your website (incognito mode) and see it load up!

Bonus Tip: How to copy Hell Gate’s mega announcement banner

If that mega announcement banner Hell Gate put up last night caught your eye like it did mine and you wondered…how did they do that? The answer is Outpost.

Why do this: Ghost has a built in announcement bar, but it’s very simple and it’s not gonna grab that much attention if you really want a message to be seen. Hell Gate wanted their coverage to be super prominent on the site so they made their announcement bar much taller and louder than normal.

How to set it up:

1. Inside Outpost, go to CTAs → Autodisplay

2. Scroll down to the In-Post Slots and choose which slot you want to use (I recommend In-Post Slot 1 for this)

3. Under Unknown, press Select or Choose New (under the down arrow)

4. Look for the Leaderboard Ad option (it might be under Archive or Inactive)

5. Edit that CTA and upload a custom image with aspect ratio 728px by 90px (you can make this in Canva)

6. Update the link to point to whatever you’re promoting

7. Save your changes as Save Minor Change

8. It should automatically load back in as In-Post Slot 1

9. You’ll have to select it for every audience you want to show it to

10. Turn it on

11. Copy the Manual Placement Snippet

12. Head over to Ghost → Settings → Code Injection and paste the snippet in the Site Header

13. Save and load your site up incognito to see it across the top

One last thing…how is this different than Ghost?

I got this question last time I wrote about Outpost’s smart call to action system. Ghost does have some built in call to actions, but you have to manual insert them either into your theme code or into EVERY POST INDIVIDUALLY. That’s pretty tough if you have 100s of posts and you want to quickly get the word out about something or change the way you frame your subscription.

This is why I turn to Outpost. Because I don’t want to have an early 2000s Squarespace scenario where I’m manually updating hundreds of blog posts. I want to update it ONCE and have it change site wide. If you want that too, Outpost should be your go-to tool.

Don’t forget to join us tomorrow to see this feature in action and start your free trial today to try it for yourself.