Becoming an influencer in a new niche can take considerable time if you go the traditional route of starting a blog/social media account/podcast and start producing content slowly about the topic of choice.
I like to accelerate that process by using the WordPress plugin WP RSS Aggregator. This plugin allows you to pull in content from other websites and social media. Basically, any web platform that outputs an RSS feed.
Let me explain how such a tool can be useful in quickly powering you to the top of your niche and allow you strong networking opportunities.
For example, I recently decided to enter the personal finance niche, specifically targeting the European scene. I took note of all the financial independence and personal finance blogs from Europe and stored their URLs. I had been following many of these websites for many months out of personal interest.
Next, I chose a domain to host my new website. After trying out various combinations, I settled on EuroFinanceBlogs.com.
I then installed WordPress, chose a theme for the site and installed the WP RSS Aggregator free plugin and the add-ons from the Pro Plan.
With that in place, I was set to grab the list of URLs I had saved earlier and input them one by one into the WP RSS Aggregator interface and even organise them by language using the Categories add-on (also part of the Pro Plan). I then started publishing the latest 5 news items from each website’s feed onto the website, and soon enough I had a complete-looking website that took less than a day to develop.
At this point I already had a website that would be useful to anyone who is either a follower of finance blogs in Europe or the finance bloggers themselves, as you can easily keep tabs on everything that is happening in that niche in real-time.
Since I created a brand new site, it was obviously not visible at all in search engines, so the next thing to do was to promote the site and start attracting traffic.
I therefore contacted each blogger whose site I had included on EuroFinanceBlogs, congratulating them on their great content and announcing the website I had created. I also invited them to kindly share the news on their social media accounts or on their website if they thought it would be useful for their audience. Since it’s a useful website, most bloggers happily obliged, resulting in several social media mentions that drove traffic and subscribers to the site.
At this point, I had not only managed to create my own platform and drive traffic to it, but most importantly I had started a relationship with all the top bloggers in the space. When trying to become an authority in a niche, it is of absolute importance to network and get in touch with other top authorities. If in the future I get to attend a finance conference where all these bloggers will be in attendance, I can further strengthen the relationship based on these initial email exchanges.
The next steps for me will be creating my own curated social media accounts and a curated newsletter. Again, these will be powered by the content WP RSS Aggregator is bringing in.
For the social media accounts, I can use a tool like Social Web Suite or Nelio Content for WordPress, and automatically tweet or share new content as it gets added to EuroFinanceBlogs after being imported by WP RSS Aggregator.
For the newsletter, I can use MailPoet or similar WordPress newsletter plugins to send out a weekly newsletter with a selection of the best articles imported onto the site by WP RSS Aggregator.
And that’s why I love WP RSS Aggregator. It can seem like a daunting and technical plugin with limited use, but once you spend some time in creative thinking you will find that it can bring a ton of value in various ways. My favorite way of using it is building credibility in a new niche, but I have known others who used it to build a portfolio of their writing across various blogs, others who used it to migrate their blogs from other platforms to WordPress, Amazon affiliate sites, and yet others who built video and podcast aggregator sites with great success.
What are you using WP RSS Aggregator for?
5 Responses
I remember asking last week how does you plugin deal with Google seeing as duplicate the same info published in 2 or more places – and penalizing their SERP rankings…
What’s Google opinion 😉 regarding duplicate content, who’s getting the heat – your aggregate site or the original content owner?
Hey Dan, you can use the canonical link option in the plugin to give credit to the original source. We usually also recommend showing only links or excerpts from the original piece, not copying it all.
Although no one knows all the details of how Google’s algorithm works, as long as you’re crediting the original source, providing value, and not blatantly scraping full posts, there won’t be any penalties. Adding your own content to the mix on the site is also recommended.
This video from Yoast, although a little old now, should also help:
So the aggregated/curated content itself won’t bring direct traffic to your site through Google, but as Jean said above, the traffic from partnerships and referrals will get you there.
Now that’s smart work done through WordPress jean, surely will look into.
Many thanks for sharing.. and All the best wishes for your finance blog 🙂
Glad you like the idea, Vishal. If you have any questions about the idea, let me know.