Q: As we have so much availability we are considering allowing 3rd parties to write content linking their own sites for a returned link, any interest?
Sounds like reciprocal linking, which I would generally recommend avoiding. Guest blogging can be good, up to a point. SEO Moz has some good posts by
Carson Ward and
Moosa Hemani. When participating in guest blogging, don't think about the links from an SEO view, but instead reaching a wider audience and gaining referral traffic. make sure you're posting in "good neighbourhoods" (i.e. the sites don't have spammy backlinks or content) and the same when accepting any posts to your site.
Q: What should be be looking out for with such a strategy and what should we avoid?
Avoid? SEO snake oil salesmen and their tactics.
If it's the my-picture.co.uk business you mentioned before, then you're in a good position as it's a cool, creative business. I assume you have employees (or at least one) with good design skills (or can even outsource, if they are too busy) to create some visually pleasing content (that's also interesting/funny) that people will want to share on social media, blog about, etc. Having stuff like competitions will gain interest, earn you social shares and links (and they hold far more value and longevity than built links). So, you want to look more at content marketing.
When searching for your domain, this turns up (on the first page):
http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=372035
Now, it ends on a "positive" (subjective, I know) note (and even one person mentions they had superb service four times), but if this is a popular forum where a lot of your customers might be (existing or potential) why not have a pro-active rep places like that? (If you don't already, as I realise it was a while back.) Also some people researching my-picture.co.uk might not even read right to the bottom of the thread, for example. Imagine how different it would have been if someone had been in there early on doing "reputation management".
Having a Google alert for my-picture.co.uk would help catch things like this, too:
http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110830134605AAnUqaF
Look at the auto-completes for your brand and check you're optimised for them, for example:
my-picture.co.uk contact number
Is an auto-complete, but the search result doesn't reveal one.
Is your business listed on Google local? Are you using rich snippets? (Including for address/telephone number?)
Good luck, mate.
