Today we have an example of one business that is using unconvential media to drive interest in their website.

PaleoSoup.co is a website dedicated to healthy soup recipes that are made following the paleo diet guidelines.

The paleo diet is a form of eating that emphasises fresh vegetables and meat at the expense of processed food and grains.

We spoke to Alistair from PaleoSoup about how he is using podcasting to drive traffic to his website and how he hopes to earn from the website when all the recipes are free.

Here Is The Interview

Project Bluesky: Tell us about PaleoSoup and how it started.

PaleoSoup: It really started through neccesity, my diet had been pretty poor and I was gaining weight. I felt terrible and I had a lot of pain in my joints. I knew from previous times that eating paleo really helped my wellbeing so I decided to go back to eating a paleo diet and used soups and my way to create a project around that.

Project Bluesky: And you only eat soups right?

PaleoSoup: At the moment I’m only eating soups yes. I started this thing… a paleo soup advent calendar. Each day I create a new paleo soup and eat it and I talk about it on my podcast. I’m planning on sticking to only soup up until christmas day.

Project Bluesky: And why podcasting? It’s it a little strange that you talk about soup and nobody can see it.

PaleoSoup: It not that strange. Afterall we look at pictures of food and we can’t taste it. I try hard to use language to describe the food. Also recipe podcasts are great because you can listen to them as you walk around the supermarket and grab the things you need. It’s much better that trying to search for recipes on your mobile brower.

Project Bluesky:  And how is it working for you?

PaleoSoup: It’s early days but people are starting to find and listen to the podcast. The great thing about podcasting is that it’s so much more personable the just writing a blog. People can hear your voice and get a sense of your personaility and that’s really fun.

Project Bluesky: What about making money? How does the site make money when you don’t charge for anything.

PaleoSoup: At the moment the site doesn’t make any money. I just want to lose some weight, get healthy and make friends with soup lovers around the world. If the site proves popular I’ll make think about that at a later date.

We recently carried out our first Project Blue Sky google hangout workshop. Emily Adams from Firework Design did a 90 minute show about the basics of how to make money from a website to a group of 11 and 12 year olds from Glasgow, Scotland.

The students were all part of local teachers Business and IT class and the event was arranged after we were contacted by Ian Carpenter from Easterhouse High School.

We connected Ian with Emily Adams who runs Firework Design and has also created some small project websites that earn money.

Easterhouse is a deprived area of the city and the children that attend Oakwood Primary School often come from underprivvaliged backgrounds. Ian Carpenter hopes that the presentation by Julia has inspired the children and together as a class they plan to create their own website project and earn money for the school funds.

Perhaps one or two of the pupils will take the lessons learned and develop things even further!

Project Blue Sky are on the look out for media agencies with expertise that they can share to teach the next generation of web designers, web developers, graphic designers, video creators, seos and internet entrepreneurs.

Our aims are to connect with young people and in particular young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

One of the most powerful aspects in our transition to the information economy is that it allows people from disadvantaged backgrounds to compete globally in the workplace. Providing of course they can learn the skills required to compete.

Our remit is to connect canadian businesses with digital media experts with young people who could really do with a helping hand to develop this skills they need.

We do this through the creation of free online learning materials, online workshops and hangouts as well as real life workshops.

If you think that your agency fits the bill and you have some time to spare. Even it’s simply 1 day per month we’d love to hear from you. 

What’s In It For You?

Aside from the warm glow of doing something good Project Blue Sky is a great opportunity to network with other digital media professionals. Some collaborations have already taken place our partners host a monthly online meetup to discuss Blue Sky projects.

On top of that participating on Project Blue Sky is something that you can be proud of and share the good news with your clients and potential clients.

We expect further business development opportunities to present as Project Blue Sky develops.

You might not think that todays young people need any advise regarding social media however there is a world of difference between chatting with your friends and uploading photos to engaging with customers.

Today’s most digital savey businesses use social media as a tool to connect with their customer base. They use it to for public relations, for understanding their marketplace and for driving traffic and increasing turnover.

As part of the Project Blue Sky programme 1st year students at the University of Western Ontario were recently treated to a Social Media For Business Workshop by Alicia Davenport of Scrann Media.

Alicia showed how she uses social media tools like facebook, twitter and pinterest to manage customer relations on behald of Scrann Media’s clients.