News aggregators are never likely to rank well in a search engine and user acquisition costs will always be high. What are some strategies for user acquisition and are there any examples (blogs, news articles, books, etc) that detail some success stories.
I guess it will really depend based on your target audience and how you can make yourself stand out.
In all cases you can try with the following:
1. PR
Focus on getting publicity from blogs and online media sites. This will help you a lot when it comes to user acquisition (your target is already there, otherwise they won't be reading news)
2. You might try Facebook ads to drive traffic to landing pages to generate leads. Offer educational content that requires opt-in.
For example: "How to read all the news in less than 30 minutes per day". In the past personally I spent about 1,5 hours per days readying news so if you teach me how to do it faster, you wont me already.
Try with downloadable ebooks, webinars, etc.
I hope that helps. Feel free to schedule a call if you need more help with that. I'd love to give you my advice on that.
What makes your platform different? How does it solve a problem? What makes it unique? Why should people use your service over others? Think these questions through and then work on partnerships. What news sources are you aggregating and why? Reach out to sources, tell them you're featuring them and why. Be a place that all the news is coming together in one place for a REASON
Long answer made short, I like what I call the Kindle Social approach. If one reads a passage in a Kindle book [even the various Kindle readers, not just the devices], they can highlight it and post to Facebook and/or Twitter. So, have an iPhone app built where you populate it with various feeds from your service. Users can highlight portions or share whole posts [actually just the URL of a whole post] via several social channels and email. Finally, get a group of "marketers" aka interns, and/or temp help, to use your app to share links. Then retweet and "like" various posts that come from your tool. It is kind of like the razor blade and the handle. Personally I am a huge fan of aggregation services, but stay away from the "techie" side of it, users don't care! They are buying a 1/4" hole, not a 1/4" drill and bit.
Content aggregation is sometimes given a bad name because it is so easy to do poorly. To be clear, if you are aggregating content, you are pulling content from elsewhere and republishing it. The best content aggregators approach the process as an art form. They recognize that many of the top sites on the web are based on content aggregation, and their work allows users to reach new depths on the subject matter they care about.
The initial distrust of content aggregation came after Google penalized websites for poorly aggregating content. The no-value-add content aggregators were giving portals a bad name. This is likely the reason that Google’s Eric Schmidt referred to the Internet as a cesspool back in 2008.
The news post serves readers who want the latest updates on the niche. These are also shared the most in social media where people crave bitesize news and stats. These news posts are where content gets aggregated. Every evening a publisher can pick the most interesting news story of the day and write about it.
Some publishers post short, 300-word news posts, and some do 500+. The reason why we consider this content aggregation “done right” is because it's not a clear copy and paste, the publishers should make the content their own and praise the mighty original author, then give their own roundup and thoughts.
You must supply additional commentary and context to make your content aggregation worthwhile. This gives your sources proper credit and gives your readers additional content to read. Using multiple sources is a staple of great content aggregators. Point out any discrepancies between multiple sources when needed.
Find the best information to aggregate, or you are wasting your audience’s time. If you can demonstrate great content aggregation skills, news sources and readers might send you content directly, making your job easier. Your audience will appreciate it when you can. Retelling stories in different ways is a valid way of teaching a subject and helps connect with other readers.
This method focuses on using multiple sources, which is what the biggest portals in the world do. Not all great content sources understand the framework of the Internet. Search engine optimization may be unfamiliar to them, even if they are experts in other topics. Great content aggregators understand SEO and help content that is not optimized get found.
The basic rule of content aggregation is exposing content that would not have been found or discussed otherwise. That is precisely what Google does, and the search engine giant has a bigger built-in audience because of this approach. Google aggregates a lot of content, more than anywhere else. Since publishers do not have the chance to compete with Google, to stay relevant as content aggregators we must find content that is not picked up by search engines and expose it to the right audience.
Besides if you do have any questions give me a call: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath
