Please help me improve this link building strategy

[BobGW]

Link building is challenging. Can you guys read my process below and offer improvements:

This is for marketing an article that is good for target websites for humanitarian reasons. It helps their readers in a way that they really need it. Not to say that all of these target websites are going to want to reference my article. I'm looking for

A. The target website to write, or let us write, a blog post around my article, of course with a link to the article and no other links to my website (unless they want to)

or B. For our article to be listed in a resource section when appropriate

How I'm doing this now:

1. We're starting with a well written, authoritative article with attractive images, graphs, and even a fancy javascript display area that's useful. The article is 3500 words. There's a big image link at the bottom that goes to the article in PDF version. Due to some hosting problems, the pdf version is disallowed in the robots.txt (it won't help to get links to it) There's 2 versions of the article, the one I'm marketing has all of our ecommerce menu and such removed, so that this version has minimal commercial parts in it. There's also a commercial version, which we are not pushing, and the non-commercial is rel cononicaled pointing over to the commercial. The non-commercial article has only one external backlink so far, and the commercial version has no external backlinks yet. We're just getting started.

2. First I like on facebook and follow on twitter. I spend some time with the target site's facebook page and like several recent posts, sharing one or two things to my own facebook page. I then retweet two good recent tweets put out by the site's general twitter account. BTW, we don't have very many twitter followers yet for our twitter account.

3. Then I read their newest blog post. I read it thoroughly. Sometimes I don't pick the newest if there is another recent one that is more similar in topic to our site. I spend some time putting together a thoughtful and helpful comment for that blog post. I submit the comment. I then go on FB and carefull post how I found the blog post helpful and place a link to their blog post. A lot of these sites, though, aren't accepting blog post comments but I always post on their facebook page.

4. I wait a couple of days in case my activity gets noticed. At that point, I go to linkedin and look for people that work for the site. If I find a content/marketing director, or if it's a small site and I find the owner [still not very good at this part], I search google for their email address and/or twitter account. I'm successful in finding a specific person only about 1/3 of the time. These sites also often have phone numbers.

5.  I send out either A. a tweet to a specific person asking if they need help with content, or B. An email to a specific person like:

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Subject: Do you need help with content that is very useful to [niche audience]

[their first name]

I hope you are doing well. [add sentence here referencing something I learned about them, I don't know how to do this part well yet]

I'm writing you because we have some content that is useful and important to [niche audience]. It's an article about [our article name and link]. We're wondering if you'd consider, since it would be very beneficial to your audience, to write a blog post explaining and citing that article.

We think our doing this would add to [niche audience] quality of life.

Sincerely,

Bob Weikel
Co-owner
[website]

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If I don't find a specific person, I write an email as similar to the above as possible and send it to their general email address or contact form. I send one email, wait 2 or 3 business days, send another email, wait 2 or 3 business days. Then I call. I ask for "Marketing" or whoever is in charge of their blog [I haven't done much of this and am not good at it yet] or if it's a small company I might talk to the owner.

Sometimes I only send one email before calling, especially if I think email's a lost cause. I never leave voicemail. I always keep calling over several days until I reach someone.

When I call and get someone, I say something like, "Hi, I'm Bob from [website]. I was wondering if you would be interested in some content that would be beneficial to [niche audience]."

I know there is a lot of room for improvement. I'm looking for a 10% success rate.

Thanks.

[kimmiedawn]

Wow, I can say at the very least that your process shows perseverance! The advice that follows comes from a background in sales and marketing, less so in expert link-building.

Your appeal to your target doesn't seem to offer a solution to a problem. You are stating that your product is 'useful,' 'beneficial,' and 'important'. Don't tell them. Show them. Does your article 'explain how to harness the wind so your community has water to drink'? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kamkwamba) Maybe your humanitarian market is not concerned about the lack of drinking water in African villages, but they do have a unique concern, and you need to connect with it.

Keep in mind, more so than a target market of accountants or phlebotomists, humanitarians are moved by emotions. They are who they are and do what they do because they care. Choose your message accordingly.

If I can say one last thing...less is more.

Go get 'em tiger;)