[mindcrime]

I think the most important thing is probably to produce high quality content, and write about "stuff" that people are interested in. Do at least basic (white hat) SEO to try to make your blog as discoverable as possible through organic search. Then start marketing the blog: Tweet about your new posts, and use relevant hashtags. Add your blog to any relevant blog directories. Share your entries in relevant sub-reddits, or here on HN, or wherever makes sense relative to your content. Share posts on G+ and, again, use relevant hashtags. If you're feeling ambitious, find other bloggers who cover a similar area, and email them and talk about writing a guest post for them. See if you can get somebody who is at least a "mini celebrity" to write a guest post for your blog. Record podcasts, screencasts and/or video blogs. Share the screencast / video blog posts through Youtube. Join relevant LinkedIn groups and share your blog posts with the group. Share on Facebook, G+ Communities, etc., etc...

Setup Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools for your blog so you can get an idea of what keywords are bringing people to you, and what content is attracting the most attention. Optimize based on your findings.

Anyway, that's just a handful of basic ideas. I'm far from an expert on SEO, content marketing, etc., but there's tons of good info our there on the net. Google "content marketing", "permission marketing" and/or "search engine marketing" for more ideas.

[X4]

You suggest good SEO. Ok.

Counterexample, use the power of a Botnet to do something unorthodox, dive into the grayzone, get media attention. Hustle

Hitting the right persons nerves will again trigger success or failure. If you gain respect this way you probably will get attention. Your responsibility then is to react timely. If you do it wrong, you could get negative reactions, which could be good for SEO, but bad for credit/respect.

But the first thing I would suggest you to do in order to join a network is simply to join a related network that persons inside of your desired network are in. Sports/Clubs/Organizations/etc.

[mindcrime]

You suggest good SEO. Ok. Counterexample, use the power of a Botnet to do something unorthodox, dive into the grayzone, get media attention. Hustle

Under the right circumstances, I'm not opposed to doing the unorthodox (I might skip the botnet though), and I agree that hustle is important and getting media attention is good. I just wanted to share some of the obvious stuff that jumped to mind immediately.

You saying that reminds me of another resource of interest: Ryan Holiday's book Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator.[1] There's some interesting stuff in there about manipulating the media. You could almost think of it as "black hat PR".

[1]: http://trustmeimlying.com/

[X4]

Thank you for the smart input!

I'll put the book into my reading list.

[leoedin]

I think most people have quite effective asshole detectors. If you get noticed because you used a botnet to spam your site, that will do serious damage to your credibility amongst almost anyone you might want to work with. If your aim is respect amongst black hat hackers, then perhaps it would be effective, but in the context of startups I can't see how that would be desireable. People don't go into business with someone they can't trust, and nothing screams untrustworthy like promoting yourself with a botnet.