Choosing a guest post subject

After you've written your first few blog posts, you'll hopefully have experienced just how delightful having your own publishing platform can be. You write what you want, when you want. If however you manage to secure a guest gig, that may change. Your host likely has a schedule for you, and guidelines to follow - it's up to you then to choose your topics wisely, lest you either end up exhausting your host's goodwill or, worse, your writing ends up feeling like work.
 
Most of us have a niche; a specific set of topics that we write about - some niches are very specialized. It's very important then that, when guesting, you don't immediately assume your new readers are in exactly the same niche. Break your readers in gently; a good introductory post is a start. If you're lucky, you'll get comments that will help direct your future posts.
 
However, do not give up on your area of expertise entirely - or, even worse, attempt to write outside your "comfort zone" purely to appease your host. Chances are you'll neither enjoy it, nor produce your best work. Authors who can flit from genre to genre are few and far between in the literary world. It's uncommon to find bloggers who can do it, either.
 
The trick then is to find a way to write for your audience that pulls them into your niche. It can be done. There are some very visual demonstrations of this, for example, check out the talks at http://www.ted.com - these are some very brilliant people with very specialized areas of study. The most captivating of these speakers are those who convey their fanaticism for their subjects to a general audience. Particle physicists can get standing ovations - so can you. Just assume your audience has basic smarts, and do your best to _excite_ them about your particular niche.

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