Well i can suggest a weird idea here. May be most of the people won't like. Create a facebook fan page describing your forum. Of course it sounds a bit different but can yield better results if can be done properly.
First you need to work with your keyword phrases as these are important in SEO. Do linkbinding and add content. Post interesting topics. Submit your site to directories. There are actually lots of ways to get more traffic but these are just the few of them.
Add some interesting things for download but setup it like non registered members cannot see the links so people will have to register and setup some post count low one for start
For example To be able to see the links on this post your post count have to be 5 or more ...
I don't think there are some 1 day trick make it become another DP forum. All u need to do is making as much as quality contents + getting as many as backlink for any high PR sites with "dofollow" allowed. Ways to do that e.g. "comment on others blogs, article directory, bookmarking, posts to other forums. Then May be your forum will become popular on search engine in some day.
My forum is the same and is geting better. I made about 50 members who is myself. I post topics and have arguments with myself. It is so when people do come, it will look like a live forum. I also advertise mine on facebook.
SEO is the only best way to drive the god traffic to your site. Also submit your forum sites on social bookmarking sites which have their forums too , like eZdia , which also may help you , Join some social networking sites like facebook etc. where you may post about your forum on different groups related to your niche
Off page optimization is a better choice. This is the one which most of the SEO will do. So in my view follow SEO tactics such as Article submission, Social bookmarking, Forum commenting, Direct submission, etc... which creates traffic to URL and increase page rank as well as keyword ranking.
Good luck...
Do what you are doing, you already have answer in your question. Just keep it up, posting thread on forum, posting article, try to build linking, use social sites to promote your site etc.
I'm afraid my initial impression was that it is not very professional - I found the space given to the prizes/contest right at the top to be gimmicky and it detracted away fromt eh main message of the forum; once I opened up a thread I got a blank box ABOVE the first post and I could not see any posts other than the first post (I was using IE6). I also did not see any members having signature links - something that generally tempts people to post!
Hope this is helpful.
i think your forum must friend for SEO,do follow,visiter can get backlink of signature.you can announce the forum in keyword of do follow.you must absorb a lot of webmaster to visit you website
