The way I look at it, you have two ways that you can go about building links to your site: following a plan or doing it haphazardly. Which do you think works better? Speaking from experience, the planned way is a lot more effective!
Why to Have a Plan
Yes, its very cliche, but there’s something about these cliche statements: they is usually some good truth to them! So here’s the cliche statement for today: if you fail to plan you plan to fail.
If you go about your link building very haphazardly you’ll get some work done, but not as much as you would with some sort of a plan. It doesn’t really matter what you plan is, just make sure you have one so that you make the most of your time.
Link building can be a very monotonous exercise (especially for things like directories). So keep the big picture in mind and develop a plan.
What Makes a Good Plan
I don’t believe that there is any one perfect way to do it. So here’s the basic idea of what I do: I just do a different technique each day to give myself variety. For example, Mondays I mainly focus on blogs, Tuesdays I work on an article or two, Wednesday I do directories, etc. I will modify this from time to time, and on some weeks I have to make little adjustments. For the most part though, I will try to stick to this type of a schedule.
When you first get going, any plan is better than no plan. Maybe your plan is that you’re going to spend 3 hours on Saturday. Great! Now decide what you’re going to get done in those 3 hours and you have a plan!
Once you have your plan the next step is simple: work that plan! As you work your plan you may find that it is not as effective as you may have thought. That’s ok, make some adjustments and keep going.