Micro Persuasion: Becoming an Aggregator

Friday, April 14, 2006

Becoming an Aggregator

According to The Social Software Weblog, Newsweek has launched a private-label RSS reader powered by Newsgator Online. it includes Newsweek feeds. I am a fan of co-branded readers. In this new world, content producers are going to move from being just distributors to aggregators. Marketers/PR pros, this goes for you too. This is going to be a recurring theme over the next few years.

As people get flooded with more information, marketers and media will need to evolve into aggregators of the best content around a particular subject. Newsweek has half this right, but I wish they would go beyond their own content. Bring us bright lights from across the Web. A better model is what SmartBrief does. They produce email newsletters for trade associations like the IAB. Now is the time to adopt this same model.

Why be an aggregator? For starters, your customers will love you. Imagine you're an auto manufacturer. You could roll up feeds on your brands from sources across the Web into a reader. Enthusiasts wouldn't need to go anywhere else. Or, imagine you are a pharma that is marketing a new drug. You could roll up all the news and blog posts around a relevant disease or condition using RSS. Your readers wouldn't even need to know that feeds are behind the aggregation too. And on and on. Aggregation is an emerging model and it aint just for Web 2.0 companies. It's for marketers too.

Technorati Tags: Media, Aggregation

Posted at 07:53 AM in Journalism, Marketing, PR, RSS, Web 2.0 | Permalink

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