Keep a list and add to it. If you're going to publish multiple articles don't start from scratch every time. Keep a list and try to add a few sites to it with each submission. This will keep your list growing and get you more exposure/links as time goes on.
Keep a good relationship with the editors. They are the end-all-be-all of whether this tactic will work or not as a link and traffic building tactic. Make sure you're polite and don't write nasty emails if you get declined. Read what they say and make sure to take it into account with future articles.
But what if you don't want to build links with articles, what if you want to get links the old fashioned way (and I'm talking about the old old old way - you know, before there was any SEO value to it). What if you would like to get people to link to you simply because they like your content (I know, shocking but it actually happens !!!)
There are a few different factors that you need to take into account to accomplish this. Here are a few important rules to follow:
You'll need to create content that others will want to link to. This is an art in-and-of-itself. I wrote about some of the basic rules involved with this in a past article "
Building Link Bait" and so I won't repeat it here.
Get the bait into social bookmarking sites. This will get people interested in your topic aware of it. If it's good, they may link to it. Don't just focus on Digg and the other majors,
look around for some industry-specific bookmarking sites. For example, when this article is complete I'll work to get it into
Sphinn, an SEO bookmarking site.
Get the bait into forums and/or blogs. I'm not talking about blog sp@mming here, I'm talking about finding blogs and forums that are RELATED to your topic and who's visitors could be genuinely helped by the tool, information, etc. that you're providing.
Don't worry if the blog has rel="nofollow" on the links. The purpose is webmaster awareness, not getting links from the blogs (I'll leave that to a different article).
Promote the bait on your site. Use banners, links, your blog, etc. to build awareness.
Provide the code to link to your bait. The easier you make it for people to link to you, the more of them will. Provide the code with a text and banner option and you'll increase the number of people who will link to you.
Put out a press release. If it's big enough news, put out a press release. If the media grabs it you've won the lottery both in publicity and in high valued links.