Hi BBuck.
Join the crowd! Matt spurred a lot of confusion and conversation with his "stick a fork in it" comment back in January. It's taken a while for a broad consensus to gel around what that really means. Search Engine Journal has a lot of solid observations and commentary on the topic. John Rampton at SEJ perhaps said it best "SEO isn’t dead. Guest posting isn’t dead."
Here's what I've been able to gleen. It really boils down to intent.
Guest blogging purely for the sake of trying to acquire inbound links is not advised. If, as in your case, you're soliciting guest posts with the intent of helping educate and assist your audience, that's perfectly acceptable so long as you set and follow strict guidelines to ensure quality. Examples of "quality guidelines" can be found on sites like Moz and SEJ and include, in addition to those you have outlined above:
- publish original content that has not been published elsewhere;
- give credit where credit it due - use proper attribution; and
- write at least 300 words, more is better.
I think even follow links are fine, so long as they are relevant, on-topic references.