Great concept! Here goes my 2 cents:
This idea is more adequate if your web/blog is somehow in a niche, and traffic is hard to get. In this case some direct actions are necessary, but some tricks may be usable for non-niche sites/blogs.
Search in twitter, blogger.com, webcities about the theme, issues or the niche that interests you (and btw your web site is about the same).
Look at the lists of persons and blogs and make a list of those that have something in common with you, the same interests, similar topics, etc. Some will have a huge list of followers or many subscribers to the blog.
Now, the tricky part is: how to contact these high-profile webizens? You would not like to knock at their door and ask for a retweet or a backlink in a blog post… right? That would look like “please sir can I have some of your traffic?”. Nope, wrong approach IMHO.
You have to offer something, first it’s a good idea to start with great content in your site/blog. But that’s not enough.
In a direct contact a start-up point is just asking for feedback on your site, or about a specific issue. Or, more intelligently, you can add comments in relevant (and popular) blogs leaving the link to your site/blog in the signature. But, hey it needs to make sense (please see shameless example bellow).
Check your network, certainly you know or know someone that knows someone in your hit list. Check your Facebook and Linkedin for contacts in your friends list.
Another way to go is to spread twit-like in other social networking sites like http://www.reddit.com and http://digg.com (take care to place stuff in right category).
And now an shameless example about a niche blog.
I’m starting now a blog that contains a Comic Strip (ok, well… actually a Beta Comic Strip).
I have not yet made a great effort to spread the word but sometime in the Future I will need feedback and will search some people to check it out and spell a few comments.
Some may even be not obvious, some contacts that I’ve pre-listed just use comics to fill in their business powerpoint presentations. So screaming out loud “free comic strip for powerpoint presentations” may produce some results (if I remember to place a link in each comic strip… hum, that reminds me of something).
Have to go make a urgent change.
Take care,
The Spin Doctor
http://nursingspins.blogspot.com/
