Here's how I was able to output conky to a text file and then add it to my xfce4-panel using xfce4-genmon-plugin. Simply follow the steps below if you'd like to do the same.
PLEASE NOTE THAT YOUR CONKY MUST BE A SINGLE LINE OR IT WILL OUTPUT INCORRECTLY TO THE PANEL
1. Add the following to conky.conf....
out_to_x no
out_to_console yes