Write Quality Content
People today do not have long attention spans. When there are a lot of sites and media competing for their attention, you better make sure that you grab a hold of it quickly or else they will move on to something else. One way that you can do that is to write quality content that separates itself from the pack.
You don't have to write an article that is the most comprehensive guide to whatever it is you are talking about. You only have to stand out a little bit in order to add to the conversation in the market and separate yourself as an authority.
How to
The key to writing quality content is to understand your audience. You want to do two things, write about what they are interested in and also speak to them at their level. If you are writing a piece geared towards beginners, then you do not want to include technical terms and abbreviations that they might not understand.
If the article that you write is interesting and funny, it will have a broader appeal.
Benefits
To me, producing quality content is the best way to get links to your site. There are sites out there who buy a lot of paid links and have to keep re-upping over a certain time period or else they lose their rankings.
Cost
When you write quality content you have a small up-front cost (either what you pay an author or the time it takes you to write it yourself) and then you are done.
What's Low Quality
Do not write articles about you, your company or your products. People are not real interested in posting that on their site and it's not going to draw a lot of links. If you write something that is very technical it can not only be boring, but above most people's heads. That isn't going to draw you very many links either. If you focus on a very specific niche then there are not going to be a lot of people interested in the topic. Think in broad terms and general topics that have popular appeal.
Let me be clear, you can have some success with low quality, or as I like to call it "garbage" content. There are a lot of spam sites out there that are not ran by people, but are completely automated. If they find an article with the keyword they are targeting they re-post it on their site with a link back to yours (if you are lucky).
However, if you want to draw links for authoritative sites that are ran by real people and have accumulated trust with the search engines, you are going to have to write good stuff. Once the market starts recognizing you as a person who adds something to the topic you will find more people knocking on your door wanting you to write quality content on their sites. That's not going to happen if everything you post is regurgitated junk.