There's a new forum called earnersforum.com and they are using a contest as a strategy to promote their website

Check out http://www.earnersforum.com/contest.php

It is quite difficult to jumpstart a forum as most people leave because of not much activity in the forums specially during the early stages. They are using a contest with some very cool prizes to tease people into posting more and referring more people.

It is basically a point system where for a certain activity, you are rewarded with points.

# Completely filling out the application gets you 10 points. This is a required action to qualify as a winner!

# Each post gets you 1 point. These posts must NOT be one-liners and worthless. Come to contribute and win, not push the boundaries. *

# Each referral gets you 50 points. **

# Each article you write on behalf of EarnersForum.com (EF would have the copyright) on the topic of SEO, making money online, ad networks, affiliate marketing, servers and security, etc. that is at least 500 words in length will earn you 100 points. Submit articles to contest[at]earnersforum.com with your username listed clearly at the top of the article. ***

# Each blog post you secure on a webmaster blog about EarnersForum.com with a link to the forum gets you 100 points. ****

So this technique can really pump up traffic to your site. There is a also viral aspect to this contest as referrals are rewarded 50 points.

Moreover, the backlinks you get from this activity is also a good way to get indexed fast, and can help you increase your PageRank.

Learn from this example and test if this strategy can be used for your website. I believe the key here is offering very good prizes that will attract more people to participate.