Welcome, don't worry most of our heads are spinning most of the time.
My favorite approach is to look at competitors backlinks like you said, use:
- Moz open site explorer
- Alexa chrome app - go to backlinks section - must pay to view all - 10 dollar subscription
- Ahref
- google search query "links exampledomain.com" to view all links to a domain.
- similar web for referring sites
- Spyfu
- WordStream
- Semrush
- many many more
When viewing blogs in your nich often times the commenters name will hyperlink to their site and sometimes its followed. Comment a lot and start a disqus account to track engagement to come back to started conversations.
Start an account on quora, stackexachnge (many communities and for sure one or more for your niche whatever it is), reddit account, other forums.
Start posting on social media 20/80 - 80 % to build authority promoting other influencers stuff and 20 percent your content - after a while your truely good content will get promoted by your network for the viral effect - To find out more about online marketing be sure to check out my Digital Marketing blog called Digital Marketing Skills
Please leave a comment or two and please thumbs up this post if you found anything here useful.
Overall three prong approach to backlinking:
- Create link worthy content
- Be active in the online community - comment on blogs, answer questions on forums, and share on social media
- Link out to reputable website on your website
