To increase traffic, you should put quality content on your website to give your visitors reason to visit your website again. Also, if you invite special personalities in your website, they can join the forum with your visitors. Don't forget to write articles on other websites and add a link to your website at the end of the article. More articles, the more chance of obtain more traffic in your website.
Also, a link exchange campaign would help.. not an automated one, but a manually one. I don't appreciate when I receive automated link exchange request and I don't know who appreciate this.