[woodruffw]

Link aggregation and social media, followed by RSS, followed by word of mouth, followed by search engine results. At least, that’s my rough impression based on my request log and the number of people who recognize my blog when I meet them IRL.

I agree with your estimation that you need to share links as a blogger to get traffic, but I don’t think it’s necessarily spamming unless (1) you’re intentionally putting out blogspam, or (2) you’re spamming sites/forums that you know aren’t appropriate venues but will read your posts anyways (e.g., flamebait).