I’ve gone about a week without posting, which is rare, but I’ve been up to my eyeballs. The best news is that I’m working on a proposal for a book about social media. A couple of people I know in the publishing world are pretty positive on the idea. If it comes through, I’m going to have my head down working on it for a few months.

I had an interesting interview with Darren Paul of NightAgency, a two-year-old advertising firm in New York that specializes in viral marketing and social media. He told me about a campaign they’re doing right now for iTravel, which is an oddly named shoe company. They built a travel site, j3tlag.com, that’s composed almost entirely of travelogs submitted by bloggers. They marketed through link exchanges and e-mail lists, mixed in a contest and some giveaways and the site’s been going gangbusters. Paul said sales of iTravel shoes are up 250%. It’s a cool site (when it’s working; it’s delivering some ghastly mySQL error messages this morning!) and an example of how content-based marketing and social media can work together. In this case, the builders have put together a compelling destination site by tapping the blogosphere for contributions. It’s also given some bloggers a chance to make a little money, which is never a bad thing. On that I’ll blog more later.