How do you target long tail keywords without writing a article for each one ?

Normally I target a primary keyword phrase and then choose a number of other phrases to go after as well that have less searches.

I will try to include the long tail keywords at least once in the content but may also sprinkle in the words used in each long tail throughout the article as well.

example - If "best blue widget during summer" is the long tail, I'll use the phrase once but may also use the words best, blue, and summer in other parts of the article.

Then when getting backlinks, I will get some with the anchor text for the long tail keyword instead of the primary keyword which is actually useful especially after the recent Google changes.

I'll also look at my traffic logs for each article and see what long tails that I'm getting traffic for that I didn't intend. I may get a few backlinks for that phrase to bump it up higher on the first page and get more traffic.

Using this method many times I start getting as much or more traffic from these long tail phrases than I might get for my primary keyword phrase.