focus more on writing great content and linking to authority websites.

Content should be your number one priority.

Creating quality content. This is the only way to beat those Panda or Penguin or whatever animal Google updates.

What a loaded question...

Let's talk about experienced bloggers who are really successful and have high volume blogs that people adore.

Have you ever noticed that these bloggers typically have large followings. Why is that? Is it just because they made a blog one day - or is it because they are a part of a community and started a blog one day as a central place to put their opinions, findings and research?

In most cases, successful experienced bloggers have been creating wonderful content long before they ever started a blog. But once they did start their blog, they obviously shared links to it to let people in their communities know where they could find it.

I suppose what I'm getting at is that yes, ultimately it is about content - but that content doesn't all reside on the blog. It's normally part of a much greater picture that surrounds the blogger themselves...

If they just filled a blog with amazing content and never shared it with anyone or put other great content into the communities their blog was about, then nobody would know about them unless it was an incredibly uncompetitive niche where the content just ranked because it existed (which isn't often the case despite the propaganda of the no-backlink-crowd.)

To just paint things as "I spend X amount of time doing this vs that" is naive and doesn't really answer what you are trying to get at, which is engagement with your target audience and producing a popular, profitable, highly frequented blog.

This was a bad question that lacked a full understanding of what makes popular blogs popular to the point that the blogger could be considered "Experienced" in the sense of success. It's the VALUE that the blogger provides other people, both on and off their own site that allows them to achieve that success. They don't think about things in these terms predefined terms.

It's transactional.... Oh hell, I'm getting off track.... Never mind, just write "great content" and don't build links. Then PM the niche you're in so I can come around and do it correctly.

i) Creating great deal of content and pointing them to your followers in Social sites like twitter/facebook to get it viral is the first priority.

ii) Backlinks as High Quality Guest Post or from an Infographic from a reputable website covering your niche is the next priority.

You should do both and focus on both. But, content comes in the first place.

I would use the 80 - 20 rule.
20% time on content, 80% for backlinks.

You could produce the absolute best content in the world, but if no-one notices it - what's the point ?

There's no default answer for OPs question.

I'm in an evergreen niche where the 100's of pages I created in 2008 are still relevant today (2014). Someone in a news related niche would need to post new content daily (forget that).

I spend most of my days sitting at my desk doing nothing.

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Content is top priority for every bloggers. Focus on High quality content and you will automatically get natural backlinks as people like your content and share it with others and their website as well.

Focus on creating quality content. Don't start building a social platform until you're sure you know what you're doing.

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Content for sure!!

It depends!

If your blog is new enough, you have to give much time in creating content initially..... if you started building links from the first day of your domain name registration, you may get penalized as well....

Backlinks are important but the age of your site should match to the quantity of the backlinks...

Writing content is preferred. If you have GOOD and UNIQUE content, you would get much more TARGETTED visitors!