The conference, which is the first of its kind in the Middle East, will tackle blogs from a media and marketing perspective, with a focus on potentials and risks that brands and traditional media is facing with this growing medium.

“iBlog… iMedia aims to bring media and marketing professionals closer to Blogs, and to highlight the role that bloggers are playing in changing the face of the media” said Samer Marzouq, CEO of erabia, the mother company of casualPR.

He also added: “Bloggers are competing with traditional media in attracting readers, search engines deal with blogs in the same way it deal with news sites and online media operators, and in some queries, blogs appear before well-known sites in search results.”

The event is a unique opportunity for marketers and media professionals to explore the world of blogging, and at the same time a chance for bloggers to discover the potentials for their blogs as an advertising and PR outlet.

Marzouq concluded: “Bloggers have the tools and the ability to judge brands and to give either positive or negative feedback on different products and services, this is a new form of word-of-mouth, and it’s even more effective than ever due to the wide reach a blog can achieve.”

iBlog… iMedia is expected to attract delegates and speakers from various professions, bloggers and journalists, as well as professionals from the marketing, media, PR and advertising fields.

Casual PR is a public relations agency that aims at opening communications channels between bloggers and the marketing communications professionals in the region in order to help in connecting brand owners with the audience.

“Blogosphere is growing in a very rapid way, despite all rules and regulations in the Arab world, bloggers of Arabia are increasing and discussing almost everything in their lives, and any brand is subject to be talked about”, said Samer Marzouq founder of casual PR.

Casual PR is in the process of creating a marketing communications community driven by bloggers. The community is being created on www.casualpr.org and is expected to comprise thousands of bloggers from the Middle East, writing in both Arabic and English.

Marzouq add “The unique thing about bloggers is credibility, bloggers are speaking their mind and express their feelings and thoughts, and their feedback could be negative or positive depend on the quality of user experience they had with your brand, that what makes blogs a unique feedback source for brand owners.”

Casual PR offers variety of services starting with drafting and circulating press releases among bloggers, to event management to media monitoring and ending with consultations for companies planning to have online presence and official blogs.

Blogs is constantly enriching the online content with user-generated reviews and news, the population has engaged with the media game and it is able more than ever to represent itself and to lead the way.

And the Middle East is not isolated of the web revolution and we started to see mature blogging scene in most of Arab countries, despite the censorship and the rules & regulation enforced on blogging in this region of the world, Arabs are becoming more attached to this tool that offers freedom of speech.

PR agencies do focus on traditional media, print mainly, and yet they are not including blogs in their plans and events even that blogs are as creditable as any other media, if not even more creditable.
Bloggers are talking their honest opinion, but they are missing accuracy as they don’t do much research and follow-up, but at the end of day nothing is perfect.

I’ve launched a new initiative, casual PR, a public relations agency that aims at opening communication channels between bloggers and PR agencies and major clients. Join the community!