As an agency managing multiple client websites, you’ve likely discovered that aggregation as a powerful strategy and are often on the lookout for content aggregation tips that make your job easier.
When executed effectively, content aggregation can be a highly efficient and effective way to deliver engaging content for your clients.
However, this approach often presents a tricky dilemma: should you prioritize quality or quantity? Striking the right balance is crucial. Overemphasizing quality might lead to inconsistent posting schedules that frustrate readers while focusing too heavily on quantity could undermine their trust in the content you provide.
In this article, you’ll find content aggregation tips to help you maintain that essential balance between quality and quantity, ensuring both your clients and their readers remain satisfied.
The Role of Content Aggregation
RSS aggregators are crucial for one straightforward reason: they simplify the content aggregation process.
Rather than spending excessive time writing original articles, agencies can efficiently use aggregated content to populate client websites. When businesses struggle to keep up with content demands, they often turn to agencies for assistance.
Creating original posts requires significant time, research, and financial resources. In contrast, content aggregation enables you to help your clients achieve more with less effort.
WP RSS Aggregator is an excellent tool for this purpose, automatically pulling in articles, blog posts, news, and even podcasts from various websites. This keeps your clients’ sites updated and vibrant, while also serving to supplement their original content.
But there is a major dilemma for those who rely on content aggregation, and that’s quality vs. quantity. Readers expect a steady stream of content to keep them coming back, but there needs to be a balance.
Focusing too much on quantity can lead to overwhelming readers with a random assortment of content that lacks coherence or relevance. A bunch of low-quality, uninteresting articles will just have people clicking off.
On the other hand, focusing too much on quality can lead to slow updates and a dead newsfeed that people forget about and abandon. You might also miss out on timely news, only posting stale articles.
The key is finding that sweet spot between consistency and credibility, which requires setting goals and creating a strategy.
Establish Clear Goals for Content Aggregation
Before you approach content aggregation, it’s important to align your content strategy with your client’s goals. Every client will have different priorities – some may want to establish themselves as industry leaders, while others want to focus on driving traffic and improving SEO. Some still may just want to provide value to readers with high-quality articles on a certain topic.
These goals should shape how you approach content aggregation. A client looking to gain authority should prioritize balance, and insightful articles posted frequently enough to help them gain traction. Rapid traffic growth may require a higher volume of posts to attract clicks and engagement. And value-focused clients may not care for quantity at all but only want to curate articles from top sources.
It’s important to have meaningful discussions with clients and set clear expectations on both ends. Ask questions like these:
- What do you want to achieve with your content and your website?
- Any measurable goals? (#1 for certain keywords, number of visitors, increased user engagement, etc.)
- How frequent should updates be?
- What does quality content mean to you?
- Any examples of sources you want to include in your RSS feed?
You’ll also need to understand the client’s target audience and their expectations of quality and quantity. A website aimed at industry experts will require in-depth expert-level content, but general consumers might benefit from frequent updates with more digestible content.
Adopt Strategies for Managing Content Quantity
Whether you want to focus more on quality or quantity, you’ll need to develop some strategies to help you maintain that level of quality you and your client decide on. You’ll need to be selective about the type of content you pull.
Choose from content sources that align with your client’s brand and the interests of their audience. More content isn’t necessarily better; relevant content is best for attracting engagement.
Get content from high-quality and interesting sources. If you’re worried about quantity, you can always add more sources to your RSS feed.
But, don’t overload your feed. It’s better to limit the number of sources to avoid overwhelming readers and flooding the website. Most people can’t keep up with dozens of articles a day and it can make it hard to navigate.
Filtering content is an essential strategy for managing all those posts. Setting up filters or keywords ensures that only relevant content makes it through onto the site.
You can use this in many ways, most notably to only allow relevant content through, or to filter out unwanted topics in particular.
How well this works depends on your tool, and WP RSS Aggregator includes automations like this as shown above. Setting up keyword filtering rules is as simple as opening any feed source and adding in your rules.
Finally, determine how often to update aggregated content. While keeping content fresh is important, too many updates can overwhelm both the website and its visitors. For most sites, posting a few high-quality, curated articles a day or even a couple times per week is enough, but rely on the client requests and audience needs.
Ensure Content Quality
Maintaining quality is just as important as managing quantity. A lot of the tips above still apply, but finding quality sources requires more research and time.
Vet Each Content Source
Ensure that the sources you choose are reliable and accurate. For instance, if you’re aggregating content for a health and wellness client, consider using well-respected publications like Healthline or WebMD. You can often find reviews or discussions about the credibility of a source on platforms like Twitter or Reddit.
Additionally, researching the authors can provide insights into their expertise; for example, if an article is written by a certified nutritionist or a well-known medical doctor, it’s more likely to be trustworthy.
Regularly Review and Update Sources
Industries are constantly evolving, so it’s essential to regularly assess your list of sources for your RSS feed. A publication that was a top-tier source in the past, such as TechCrunch for tech news, may not be relevant as the industry changes. Set a schedule—perhaps quarterly—to review your sources. If you discover that a source doesn’t match your client’s needs anymore, don’t hesitate to purge it from your list.
Instead, consider adding emerging sources or niche blogs that are gaining traction and credibility in the tech industry.
Choose Relevant Sources
It’s essential to select content sources that are not only high-quality but also directly relevant to your client’s industry and target audience. For example, if your client is in the financial services sector, aggregating content from sources like Investopedia or The Motley Fool will provide valuable insights that resonate with their audience. On the other hand, aggregating general news from a source like CNN may not deliver the specialized information your client needs to engage their readers effectively.
Another way to add value to content is to add commentary or annotations to aggregated content. A summary, detailed analysis, or even just a sentence adds a personalized touch that readers appreciate.
In WP RSS Aggregator specifically, you can include a brief description and attribute your imported content directly to enhance the credibility of your sources.
Monitor and Adjust as Necessary
Once you’ve implemented your content aggregation strategy, the work doesn’t stop there. While the bulk aggregation may be automated, you should implement analytics to gather feedback on how well your feed is engaging users.
Tools like Google Analytics can determine whether visitors are interacting with the feed, what posts get the most views and clicks, and if people are staying on the page or bouncing off.
Use these metrics to adjust your feed, rebalancing your focus on quality vs. quantity, or the website design around it. If users are disengaged, it might be a sign that the content is either overwhelming in volume or lacking in relevance or depth.
You can also gather user feedback through surveys, comments, and social media. Readers can provide direct insights into what type of content they find valuable and whether the feed has too much or too little quality and quantity.
Besides that, you can continue to audit aggregated content as already mentioned and purge irrelevant sources, and consider setting up periodic reviews with clients to assess the effectiveness of your content strategy. Discuss what’s working and what’s not, and make the necessary adjustments to your content aggregator.
Conclusion
Balancing quantity and quality in content aggregation is key to delivering real value to clients and their audiences. By carefully selecting sources, filtering content, and maintaining a consistent posting schedule, agencies can provide fresh, relevant, and engaging material for their clients.
For those looking to streamline this process, WP RSS Aggregator is the ideal solution. With the customized All Access plan, you unlock a suite of essential features: filtering, feed to post, full-text import, AI integrations, and more—perfect for managing your clients’ feeds whether you’re a small agency handling 1-5 sites or a larger one managing more than 5 sites.
With WP RSS Aggregator, you can effortlessly deliver top-quality content for your clients while significantly simplifying the entire process.
