How to Automatically Curate Content in WordPress

Ever noticed how the most successful content sites seem to always have fresh, relevant content? Here’s a secret: they’re not creating everything from scratch.

After helping hundreds of WordPress bloggers, we’ve learned that smart content curation is often the key to consistent content delivery.

Plus, we’ve tested numerous content curation tools and helped many readers implement them effectively.

In this article, we’re going to share the exact methods and tools you need to automatically curate content in WordPress.

What Is Content Curation and How to Do It Correctly?

Content curation is a clever way to keep your site rich with valuable insights without creating all of the content yourself.

It involves gathering and sharing selected pieces from various sources, providing a one-stop location for users searching for top-quality information.

For instance, if you run a membership website, you can curate a section where users see industry news from third-party sources.

Or perhaps you want to show the top sports highlights from various sources on your site.

Another scenario could be a WordPress multisite where you want to curate content from all the different sites on the network.

For example, here is how Awesome Motive (the holding company behind WPBeginner and other brands) shows news from its different brands on its website.

Apart from genuine use cases, there are also websites made specifically for sharing content from other sources using auto-blogging tools.

Curating Content While Avoiding Copyright Infringements and SEO Penalties

While content curation can enhance your website’s value by bringing in fresh perspectives, it’s essential to handle it responsibly. Here are some things to keep in mind when curating content.

First, give proper credit. Always credit the original source when sharing content. This means providing a link back to the source, including a small excerpt, and using images with permission.

Using content without proper credit or permission can lead to copyright infringement complaints.

Second, avoid plagiarism. Never copy entire articles without permission. Instead, add a summary and link to the full article.

Search engines might penalize sites that plagiarize content, flagging them as low quality. It is quite difficult to recover a site from a Google search penalty.

It may also lead to serious legal troubles, possibly costing you financially.

The internet is full of spam blogs that use content curation tools to set up auto-blogs and make money through ads. That’s not a great idea, considering the potential financial and legal costs and how unsustainable it is in the long run.

That being said, let’s look at how to properly set up automatic content curation in WordPress while avoiding copyright and SEO issues.

Properly Setting up Automatic Content Curation in WordPress

The easiest way to curate content on your WordPress website is to simply use the RSS feeds block.

To use this method, start by editing a post or page where you want to display curated content and adding the RSS block to your content area.

In the block settings, you need to enter the RSS feed URL of the content source that you want to display.

WordPress will then fetch that feed and display it on the screen. You can use block settings to change its style, display excerpt, author, and date information.

The downside of this method is that you’ll have to add an RSS feed for each source separately.

It will be time-consuming and won’t look very pretty to the users.

What if you could automate the whole process, combine different sources, and even categorize them?

Let’s take a look at how to properly automate the whole content curation process.

Using RSS Feeds to Automatically Curate Content in WordPress

First, you need to install and activate the Feedzy plugin.

A part of ThemeIsle, this plugin makes it easy to automatically pull fresh content from other websites, keeping your site updated without manual effort.

There’s also a premium version of Feedzy with more features, but for the sake of this tutorial, we will use the free version.

To start using Feedzy, you need to install and activate the plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once the plugin is activated, you need to visit the Feedzy » Feed Categories page and click on the Add Feed Category button at the top.

On the next screen, you need to provide a title for this category.

Below that, add the URLs of RSS feeds that you want to include. Use commas between each URL to separate them.

After that, click on the ‘Publish’ button to store your feed category.

Repeat the process if you need to create more categories.

Importing Curated Content From Feeds to Your WordPress Website

Feedzy can also import blog posts from the feeds to your WordPress blog posts.

This way, they will be stored in your WordPress database like regular posts and give you flexibility to do different things with the curated content.

However, you can skip this step if you don’t want to import them to your WordPress website.

To import blog posts, simply visit the Feedzy » Import Posts page and click the ‘New Import’ button at the top.

First, you need to provide a name for this import. This name could be anything that helps you identify it.

Below that, you can add individual RSS Feeds or choose one of the feed categories you created earlier.

Next, scroll down a little to the ‘Map Content’ section.

From here, you can map RSS feed items to WordPress blog post settings.

For instance, you can choose which category to assign to all imported posts.

You can click the ‘Insert Tag’ button to map a Feed element to a post element. For instance, you can set the Item Description to be used as Post content.

Next, scroll down to the General Settings section.

From here, you can choose how many posts you want to import.

Finally, click on the ‘Save & Activate Importing’ button to save your changes.

You will now be redirected to the imports page, where you will see the import you just created. Simply click on the ‘Run Now’ button to start importing posts.

The plugin will now fetch and import posts and add them to your WordPress website in the background.

Once finished, you’ll need to refresh the page to see the import stats.

Feedzy will now automatically fetch new posts from your content sources and import them to your WordPress website.

Displaying Curated Content in WordPress

Now that you have set up an automated import mechanism for the content you want to curate, the next step is to display it on your website.

There are different ways to display curated content in WordPress via Feedzy feeds. Let’s go through them one by one.

Method 1. Fetch Content via Feedzy RSS Feeds Block

This method is recommended if you decide not to import content to your WordPress website.

Simply edit the post or page where you want to display the curated content and add the Feedzy RSS Feeds block to your content area.

You can then enter a feed URL to display or choose one of the feed categories you created earlier.

Next, use the block settings panel to select the feed’s number of items, style, and other settings.

Once you are finished, don’t forget to save or publish the post and page.

You can now preview it to see your curated content in action.

Method 2. Display Imported Content in WordPress

This method is more flexible, but would only work if you decided to import content directly into your WordPress website.

Simply edit the post or page where you want to display the curated content. On the post edit screen, add the Latest Posts block to your content area.

By default, the block will display your most recent articles in a plain list. You can change that under block settings.

From here, you can choose to show an excerpt, featured image, number of items, and more.

You can also switch from list to gallery view, choose the number of columns, or only display posts from a specific category.

For instance, let’s say you mapped all imported content to be added to the ‘Industry News’ category. Now you can just display that particular category as your curated content.

Once finished, you can save or publish your post/page and preview it in a new browser tab.

Here is how it looked on our demo website.

Using either of these methods will automatically display the latest posts from your content sources.

Bonus Tip: Social Media Content Curation in WordPress

What if you wanted to curate content from social media platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook?

The easiest way to curate social media content in WordPress is by using Smash Balloon.

Smash Balloon is the best social media plugin for WordPress. It allows you to beautifully display social media feeds on your WordPress website. Check out our detailed Smash Balloon review to learn its full scope.

First, you need to install and activate the Smash Balloon plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Smash Balloon comes with separate plugins for different social media feeds.

You can also buy the ‘All Access Bundle,’ which includes all their plugins + social wall plugins that can combine different social feeds into one.

Upon activation, you can start connecting your social media accounts and set up the feeds you’d like to display.

Follow the on-screen instructions to set up each feed.

You can connect to your social media profiles, third-party sources, search terms, hashtags, playlists, and more.

Depending on what you’re trying to fetch, you may be asked to connect to your social media account and permit Smash Balloon to access your data.

Repeat the process to connect your social media accounts.

Once you have set up your social media feed, you can copy the shortcode from the feeds page.

Next, you need to add the shortcode to a post, page, or sidebar widget.

You can now visit your website to see your social feed in action.

You can also create a social wall to combine different feeds and display them as one.

Simply go to the Smash Balloon » Create a Social Wall page and copy the shortcode shown on the screen.

You can now add this shortcode to any WordPress post, page, or sidebar widget where you want to display your curated social feed.

Here is how it looked on our test website.

For more details, see our tutorial on how to add social media feeds in WordPress.

Bonus: Expert Tips on Automatic Content Curation

We hope this article helped you learn how to curate content in WordPress. If you want, explore these resources to enhance your content strategy:

• How to Add Content Upgrades in WordPress and Grow Your Email List
• Ways to Protect Content in WordPress (Ultimate Guide)
• Best News Aggregator Websites (+ How to Build Your Own)
• Beginner’s Guide to Preventing Blog Content Scraping in WordPress
• Best WordPress Content Protection Plugins (Expert Pick)
• Best WordPress Dynamic Content Plugins (Expert Pick)

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.