Ego baiting sounds a little grubby, but when used correctly, it is a highly effective way of catching the attention of influencers in your niche.
No matter how high profile you are, it's always a boost to be asked for your opinion as an expert, or to be featured within a list of influencers.
Interviews
Right at the top of the list for ego-baiting is securing a list with an influencer in your niche.
It's a great way to both tap into their audience, and ensure they are on board for, at minimum a share, and in some cases a link.
And on that note, don't get too hung up on whether the influencer themself links to you (and certainly don't push for it) - the key is the sharing as more eyeballs on your content = more potential link opportunities.
An influencers slip stream is full of potential linkees, and as a bonus, by having that influencer featured on your site you will be leveraging some of their credibility.
So how do you go about securing an interview with an influencer?
When you're lower down the food chain, it can sometimes seem that A list bloggers are completely incaccessible, perhaps residing on some distant planet, but you'll find that actually, most of them are just human beings. Human beings with email addresses. Email addresses that you can, believe it or not, send emails to.
You won't get a reply from everyone, but if you target the top 10 influencers in your niche, then there is a good chance that you'll be able to secure an interview with at least one of them.
To increase your hit rate, try not to be boring. Spend some time creating questions that they won't have been asked a hundred times before - it will be much more interesting for both the influencer and those who read the interview (read, more potential links).
Quotes From Influencers
Roundup posts are hot at the moment, and for good reason.
You'll have seen lots of them around, particularly in the IM niche - 'X experts give their opinion on this', 'Y gurus share their favourite tool for doing that'.
It's also much easier to get several big names on board for a roundup post than for separate interviews, as there is much less overhead involved in answering one question than answering 10 (or more).
With regards to the ego-baiting part of this, once you have a couple of high profile bloggers on board you might want to name drop them in your outreach (i.e. I already have x and y on board, and would love to get your insights too).
Again, when you have high profile members of your niche featured on your site, it's both a great link asset and a big boost for your credibility.
Top 10 Lists
Top 10 lists can be very effective as ego-bait, and also make for great linkable assets.
For example, in the fashion niche, you might create a list of the 'Top Ten Fashion Bloggers To Watch In 2015'.
Again, you'll likely get at minimum a share from each of the bloggers on the list, and more than likely pick up a few links as bloggers love to be featured on lists such as this.
Pro tip: To really get some bang for your link building buck, you could create an award badge for the featured bloggers to use on their sidebar (which of course links back to your site).
Further Reading
Recommended Tools