Do you struggle to keep up with all your favorite blogs, or podcasts amidst your day-to-day life? Or are you simply exhausted by the ten tabs you permanently have open in your browser?
Jason Beaird, a product design manager, knows a little bit about this struggle. Jason loves to read the latest articles written by the design blogs he follows, but keeping up was tough. Apart from learning about the ins and outs of the industry from his peers, he also wanted his colleagues to benefit from these resources and inspire them to share their design knowledge on their team blog.
To solve this problem, Jason decided to find a way to curate (organize and filter) the latest content from various design team blogs. This way, he and his team could stay informed without having to visit all the blogs individually. In this article, we’ll explore how Jason achieved success using WP RSS Aggregator.
The Story Behind Team Design
Jason was constantly devouring content churned out by talented design teams. While a significant chunk of these teams resided on Medium, the platform lacked a filtering system to curate a feed specifically from them. Initially, he used Feedly to stay updated on their latest posts. However, frustrated by Feedly’s sharing limitations, Jason started exploring the idea of creating a blog post on his personal website. This blog post would be his way of compiling and sharing his curated list of design feeds, offering fellow design enthusiasts a one-stop shop for inspiration.
While he found himself revisiting the post, it eventually became buried amongst his other content on his personal site. Realizing its true potential as an evergreen resource, Jason knew it needed its own dedicated space.
The initial plan was straightforward: a simple list of links leading to the design blogs he so admired. But Jason, always aiming to be helpful, felt it would be more valuable to include the latest headlines from each blog, giving readers a quick glimpse into their current content.
Thus, in early 2023, Jason leveraged WP RSS Aggregator to curate a comprehensive post on his personal site. This post meticulously compiled feeds from a staggering 40 in-house design team blogs, offering a trove of design-related content in one convenient location. Even with the free version of WP RSS Aggregator, Jason could effortlessly retrieve the latest headlines for each blog within minutes.
However, Jason was passionate about improving his reader’s experience and wanted customization options that allowed him to display a preview of the aggregated content. For this, he turned to WP RSS Aggregator’s Plus plan.
How Jason Beaird Used WP RSS Aggregator
Let’s take a look at how Jason used WP RSS Aggregator.
For this project, Jason pulled content from different sources and imported them as feed items on his team website. WP RSS Aggregator also let him display these feed items on his website, with a link back to the original article.
This streamlined the process of adding the design team blogs he followed. With his content list populated, Jason turned his attention to the presentation. He wanted readers to be able to quickly scan the blogs and get a sense for their content, and ideally, be drawn in to click through to read more.
Luckily, WP RSS Aggregator Plus plan offers a solution in the form of a Templates feature. This feature allowed Jason to customize the display of his feed items and move away from a simple list format to create a more visually engaging grid layout. The grid layout would display each blog’s name, featured image, and a snippet of the latest post. This way, readers could see what each design team was up to at a glance.
To ensure a well-rounded browsing experience, Jason went beyond the grid layout.
He also included a list view featuring the latest posts from his favorite design blogs. Using both the grid and list layout gave users the option to quickly scan headlines or delve deeper into specific content.
The Results
While Jason’s project saw website traffic growth and positive industry feedback, those weren’t his sole measures of success.
Expand your website’s reach and keep your audience engaged with a powerful content aggregation strategy. WP RSS Aggregator makes it easy – simply set up your desired feeds and the plugin takes care of the rest, automatically fetching fresh content.
Join over 2 million users, including Jason, and leverage the power of automated content curation to build a website your readers will love.
2 Responses
Love the curated site Jason and welcome Didi!
Thank you Nicholas!