I am about to start a new blog about business (contents provided by myself and some of my friends who are business analysts).

Blog design is underway and I am left with 400$ for promotion of my newly going to be launched blog.

When i started thinking about this i started having some ideas for link building and branding

1. Run a contest with cash prize.
2. Submission to blog directories and rss feed directories.
3. Press release stating about my new blog.
4. Squidoo lens creating with link to my blog.
5. Hub page creation with link to my blog.
6. Article syndication using isnare.
7. Social media marketing by using digg, you tube, stumble upon etc.

I was wondering if the following has any effect on blog branding and marketing or increasing link popularity

1. Forum posting.
2. Getting links from blogs. This is not like paid review or from people I know. This is from websites which claim to submit my article with max 4 links per article to 300-600 blogs. They charge less than 100$ for this kind of service. They will spin the articles and post as needed.
Do you think I must go with it or just focus on quality contents?
Will they be of any use to improve my technorati authority. They claim most of the blogs are claimed on technorati.