Five Great Reasons to Guest Blog! #TBSU

If you're a blogger, you probably pour a lot of time and attention into your blog. Just writing and formatting your own posts may seem daunting at times. Why on earth would you also want to write posts for other blogs?

Plenty of reasons come to mind!

Reason #1: Variety!

Your blog has an identity. For example, pretty much everything on this blog relates to publishing, supporting writer friends, and dog rescue. When I want to write about something else, I guest blog.

For example, the emotional/spiritual aspects of the Law of Attraction don't feel quite like a fit here. If you want to read about my spiritual journey, you can find eighteen of my guest posts on Deliberate Receiving, cataloged on the tab above. When my friend Nathalie Thompson started her new LOA blog Vibe Shifting, she invited me to guest there also. So far I've written two posts for her, Healing Lessons and LOA, and Money, Taoism, and the Law of Attraction.

Reason #2: Exposure!

About a month ago, I started contributing a weekly column to an awesome website, Skelations! The webmaster, Nathan H-C, is young, hard-working, inventive, creative, ambitious, and did I mention hard-working?! Nathan put out a call for How-To articles, and I thought, why not?

Nathan H-C, owner of Skelations.

The demographic for Nathan's website is quite different from my blog, but his readers are equally likely to want to read my novels. Win, Win, WIN!

Click to visit Skelations. 

Nathan recently redesigned his site, and I'm now a featured contributor. Thanks, Nathan! Please go by and visit. There's a permanent button on the left sidebar here. Skelations also has reviews of books and movies, interviews with interesting people, LGBTQ campaigns, and click-to-read fun facts. If you have a book trailer, send it to Nathan for great publicity in his new trailer database. You can contact him through his Twitter account @skelations.

Reason #3: Fresh Ideas!

Doing book blog tours with Bewitching Book Tours, I was challenged each month to come up with fresh interviews, unique guest posts, and entertaining tidbits from my novels. Doing the blog tours fulfilled all of the reasons for guest blogging, but most memorable for me are the wonderful ideas that blog hosts sometimes suggested. It hadn't occurred to me to write about The Wicked Fifties on Louisa Bacio's blog,  to come up with a list of 10 tips for sexy road trips on Shelley Munro's blog, or to realize that the heroes of my novels are all Taoists on 4 the Luv of SaNiTy. Thank you to all the host bloggers for inspiration!

Reason #4: New Friends!

I can't even count on two hands the number of new friends I've made guest blogging. Here's a list and a shout-out to some who have become an important part of my daily life. Huge thanks and many hugs to you all!

Roxanne Rhoads

Seumas Gallacher

Nathalie Thompson

Molly Ann Wishlade

Melody Fletcher

Sapphyria

Nathan H-C

Pembroke Sinclair

Erzabet Bishop

Shelley Munro

Lori Gosselin

Please visit and join their blogs!

Reason #5: Fun!

Reason 5 sums up all the other reasons in one word: FUN! For me, meeting new people, finding new writing challenges, and making new blogger friends are all adventures that keep the writing game fun. Yes, we work on writing and editing our novels, we tweet and Facebook and Google+ all day. But there's something special about writing a guest post, knowing someone invites your words into their space, and chooses to share their readers with you. It's a wonderful feeling, and I'm honored by each invitation!

Reciprocity!

Let me close by inviting you to write a guest post for my blog! The feature, "Encouraging Words from _________," is designed for guest bloggers to offer their wisdom and inspiration. The guests so far have been beyond awesome, and their posts are some of the most popular on the blog. So if you'd like to expand your audience and to write about something that perhaps doesn't quite fit on your own blog, please send me your ideas!

And of course, if you'd like me to guest post on your blog, I'm always open to suggestions!

Thanks for joining me here today! I hope you've met some new friends, and perhaps been inspired to write a few guest blogs. What do you find are the advantages of guest blogging? Have you discovered any downsides? How many guest posts do you write, as compared to posts for your own site? Do you participate in book blog tours? Please join us for a lively conversation in the comments.

Check out these related guest posts! 

• Encouraging Words from Aubrianna Hunter 
• Encouraging Words from Nathalie Thompson
• Encouraging Words from Kevin Hanrahan
• Encouraging Words from Seumas Gallacher
• Encouraging Words from Ronnie L. Smith of Writer's Relief
• Encouraging Words from William Ogden Haynes

The list of blogs above are presented in the grand tradition of #TBSU, The Blog Scratcher's Union!