Blogger Spotlight: Faya Nilsson, Fitness on Toast

What initially started as a platform to share a more holistic way of living has grown into a full-time occupation for Faya Nilsson. Now an award-winning blogger Faya uses her blog, Fitness on Toast to offer everything from nutritional recipes, gym training to sports fashion. In this Spotlight, Faya speaks to us about the challenges of promoting content through social media, how she measures the success of Fitness on Toast, and how being listed on our top 10 Fitness Blog ranking has helped to improve her relationships with PRs.

Why should people read your blog? What makes it different? Fitness On Toast is meant to be an easily-digested dose of ‘healthy lifestyle’ motivation that doesn’t take itself too seriously (in a world where too much is serious!), and which helps to inform people about their health choices, and injects a little bit of fun into the day! I think it’s a unique combination of workout tips, routines, healthy travel ideas, fitness fashion and nutrition advice in a single destination, properly written by a qualified, practising professional, who always gives unbiased opinions. It’s also complemented by fabulous professional photography, shot in some of the world’s most wonderful locations, which I think massively lifts the appeal of what I’m trying to say!

How do you measure the success of your website? There are so many ways to measure a blog’s success and equally learn from its shortcomings. It’s a constant process of evolution and improvement, something Google calls ‘Launch and Iterate’, and it’s all informed by quantitative statistics and qualitative feedback. Personally, I place a far higher weighting on the qualitative commentary from the community of people that interact with my posts. Whether that is a subscriber commenting that they loved a recipe on the blog post itself, an email to that effect, a comment on an Instagram post about that recipe, or a retweet; it all counts for me. The fact that people are in some way touched by the passion of what I’m sharing is my understanding of success.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to start a blog? It’s the most regularly asked question I encounter, so I wrote a dedicated post to answer it with the proper consideration, which you can find here! In short, invest in a good camera (I think that strong photos are the biggest differentiator and add credibility), go for a clean, minimal format, write proprietary content where you have a strong view to share, and persevere! It’s a bit lonely at the start but if you keep going, you meet some great people and have some real unplanned adventures!

How do you work with marketers and PRs? I have an excellent agent, Nicholas Douglas from PRJCT Management, who acts as an intermediary for me. He knows the type of content I love to produce and helps field the outreach accordingly, which is an enormous help, as there is just too little time in the day to tackle all PR emails properly. When we decide on a super exciting project with an agency, then the fun part begins, and I love to get really hands on at that point. I’ve laid out the ways in which I work with marketers and PRs on a separate ‘Disclosure’ page, here which I think is an important manifesto to consider for any blogger.

How do you use social media to promote and share content? What are the challenges? Social media is just so crucial for me, and all the major platforms fill a necessary space on the social spectrum, whether that’s the memorialised Instagram ‘grid’ or the fleeting Snapchat story. A blog without social is like chocolate mousse without the chocolate; it would be a half-formed message!

Embracing all the social channels allows me to share those painstakingly-crafted thoughts with a whole new audience that might never have been looking for it otherwise, and helps me to engage with a wider community.

The challenge is that there’s so much noise, it’s hard to cut through so that the message is heard. I feel that consistency, a unique distinctive style, and a valuable message to communicate are the way to overcome the challenges!

What can PRs do in working better with you? Sending out generic mail shots asking me to feature something on the blog where it’s obviously not relevant is unhelpful. The ‘message’ is all a blog has to go on, and I feel that some PRs don’t think about this.

I am regularly amazed by some of the low-quality outreach, whether it be someone else’s name (an understandable mistake when there are hundreds to get through, but a key point of detail), or statements that make it clear the PR team haven’t actually looked at the blog’s content.

Appropriateness is everything. My suggestion would be that PRs get a feel for the most appropriate way to pitch a story to each specific blogger; with proper consideration, the success rate is likely to go up.

What has been your blogging highlight? It’s tough to say, as there have been many, and that’s the way it should be for any blogger! At the start, everything’s a highlight, but then, new and more significant events become weightier highlights! I feel that the Active Escapes series I author are some of the things I’m most proud to have authored. Then there are my ambassadorships for the likes of Adidas, Garnier and Westin Hotels, which are brands I’ve grown up with and admire enormously, so to work with them on a quite intimate and privileged basis is just so personally rewarding.

What will be big in your blogosphere in the coming months? My big, exciting project right now? I’ve got a book coming out at the end of the year called Fit in 3 which is incredibly exciting as I never expected I’d be embarking on that sort of journey when I first started up my blog!

What does the Vuelio blog ranking mean to you? It’s super important! Over the years, having been listed in the top 3 Fitness Blogs has given me a degree of external validation with PR professionals which has helped introduce me to new relationships. It also makes the type of relationship slightly different; there’s context and considered targeting to PR outreach which comes as a result of a studying of the Vuelio rankings. To my mind, it remains the only industry-targetted way to identify relevant content creators, and like I mentioned earlier; appropriateness is everything!