New Site- First Things to do?

Hi,

I have a new site which should finish being developed by the end of November. We are well over half way there with it now; there hasn't been a load of coding to do, it is a word press site, where I have purchased the theme- it is all the copy writing that will take the time.

I am now trying to devise my strategy for getting traffic from search engine rankings.

However, of everything I have had to research this is hurting my head the most, as there are so many differing opinions, and "products and services" ranging from spamming the sh*t out of twitter, to mass bank link building services.

So I need some help devising a initial 3 month launch strategy to get ranked at least somewhere. The keywords are fairly competitive so I am not looking at an instant over night success here; but I do have some pages within the site that are specifically targeted towards much less competitive keywords within the niche.

*Initially I will be adding to the blog on a daily basis, to add content. This will be more like a diary style of writing. A "what we've been doing" way to keep the visitors updated, which should keep them coming back, as they will want to see how my success is going, and get ideas to replicate it.

*I will also be adding 1 professionally written 1000 word article a week on the subject matter the website addresses.

I do have some budget for this part of the project, but not loads. So the plan doesn't have to involve me sat at a computer for hours adding back links etc- especially if I can get someone to do that for me for free [if that is the best strategy etc]

Thanks for your help

Michael

NB: I will initially put some money towards facebook ads, and Adwords. So I am looking more at growing less dependent upon this over time.