It’s happened before. A “naive” young PR manager from a large tourist company will ask me if we can publish their original, native content. After all, we are the leading media in the field and a story like that should, of course, be published right away. They weren’t prepared to pay anything, but they do appreciate us as a credible media. I was told on the same day that they were giving out complimentary services to influencers from the last European middle of nowhere.

In a way, this speaks about the relationship towards content marketing, where after a decade of training and hundreds of articles written, knowledge is still worth less than a post on Instagram. According to them, the value is only found in articles that they manage to scrounge for free. What you will get are repetitive, dull stories, no analytics and fishy content marketing.

Stories shape the world, history and the meetings industry. The world of events is a world of stories first. Many have already been written, but the majority of them are waiting to be read by our readers. Good stories make our heart beat faster and reveal what was previously hidden.

Stories are the locomotives of digital marketing and social media

Despite the rather pessimistic introduction, many of our clients have started to realise how important good stories actually are. They realise that storytelling is a profession. One that carefully analyses and synthesises events. We have to ask ourselves, what would the world be like without expert storytellers?

Just like in architecture, not just anyone can design a house and the same goes for content marketing. Good content marketing is built upon three interconnected processes:

1. Story creation: top-notch content is the easiest way to reach the hearts of meeting planners.

2. Story distribution: without an efficient distribution platform, we cannot reach meeting planners. Having your own media is extremely important.

3. Target audience relationship: it’s vital to understand the needs and habits of meeting planners.

Content should be produced on a daily basis, but also analysed accordingly. Content marketing has become a strategic tool for the most developed meeting destinations and suppliers. It is integrated into all pores of marketing. As the final outcome, it is thoroughly changing the organisation process and technical support of destination marketing.
Content marketing goes hand in hand with artificial intelligence, as it is the field where it has seen the fastest development. Everything is focused towards making the content relevant. It’s AI that is helping us understand our audience, their interests and purchasing user experience. Artificial intelligence helps us reach our target audience and is able to offer them relevant information.

It’s important to note that Google’s unpredictable algorithm went from analysing key phrases to analysing content quality. At the moment, quality content can only be guaranteed by experienced writers who know the field. Agencies developing and using specialised AI tools for content production are on the rise, but the chances are none of us will be able to afford them any time soon.

Future is on the doorstep of the meetings industry. Destinations relying on old-fashioned tricks and techniques will quickly lose the battle in our new ecosystem.

At Kongres Magazine, we are fascinated by the intertwining of creativity, the use of data and artificial intelligence. It’s a huge opportunity for the meetings industry. Moreover, AI can help us improve that creativity and make our content even more effective.

We decided to ask some leading destinations and suppliers for their thoughts on the topic. We received a ton of interesting answers which you can read in this issue’s IN FOCUS segment.