create a few dummy accounts and post up like crazy both on topic and off topic , offtopic stufff is good think of it as going to be a group meeting where you have the icebreaker questions "introduce and tell us a bit about yourself "

you need to make the place look busy , make people want to stay give them a reason to stay

you could also reply to posts with false information that will make people who read your forum want to reply and say" mate your a tosser you don't know what you are talking about , you don't do that you do it like this "

Creating dummy accounts? Wow. Never heard of that succeeding.

That's actually a pretty good idea.

what difference is there between creatinga few dummy accounts compared to getting friends and family posting or paying for the service? the trick is to make the place look active , you could rewrite posts from other forums