It can be hard to achieve high quality backlinks, it can also be very time consuming and therefore expensive, but there is one sure fire way to get at least a handful from all the effort you put in.
My top tip for making the process easier, or at least more successful is to involve contributors in your content pieces.
When developing your content idea think about whether the piece would be more valuable to your audience if you had input from your industry / community. Reaching out to relevant audiences during the content planning and writing process could get you some good connections to leverage when the piece is ready to publish.
To research contributors you can lean on Twitter and media relations tools (like Response Source) or just resort to good old Google to find influencers, businesses and people with a useful opinion.
Once the piece has been written you then have some ego bait - reach out to your contributors and you may just find they'll help publicise the piece for you, as well as include on their site. You may need to write some extra unique content for them, but it'll be a small price to pay on a topic that you will already be brimming with insights to share.