What are some creative free ways to drive traffic to a new site?

Social Media is just one of many options. Create Facebook, Twitter, etc. pages for your site. You'll need to network on Twitter and Facebook though to connect with others and drive traffic. Make interesting posts and tweets. Like other people's posts/pages. Follow others. Look for groups, etc. where people might share an interest in your product or service.

Paid traffic is the only thing that is reliable and scalable these days.

Everything else you are spending your time on could be worthless to you in a few months time.

Video marketing, article marketing, social media marketing, and paid marketing to name a few. You could master one method of traffic generation or 2-3. It's up to you.

Create a custom QR code that links to your website. Having something like 'Curious?' in the middle and put it in public toilets ect... people will scan it as they are taking a splash.

1. Forum are always a good way to start. Just pick a relevant forum sites in that way you only drive potential client to your site (if you are offering some services or product).

2. Social Media Profiles

Social media, SEO, forum posting is one the free and best way to generate traffic for a new site.

Facebook is the best place to get free traffic. you can add groups and follow people and post something relevant on your page to attract traffic to your business.

Paid traffic is always useful.

Do SEO, try some forums and blogs

post free adds on classified websites

Have a look in this thread All in one Traffic Tips there you'll find a lot of good tips!

Quality back links, good on page optimization and informative content, emails, sms messaging, advertisement over internet and media plays a crucial role for receiving traffic to a website in just few days.
Instant sms messaging, social networks sharing, and emails, delivery through mobile phones bring good traffic to a site.

Just want to add that driving traffic without paying for it be a long-term process that usually takes weeks and months.

Easy. Social media marketing, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, Content Marketing, Podcasts...Forums, Paid Adverts. Its takes a while, it does not happen overnight. But THEY will find you. If you need help with hiring Virtual Staff to expand your business, Let's talk!

Not sure how creative but works well for me:
I use my own main sites rss feed and divide them up on different niche blogs. Apart from some minor updates and edits, it's pretty much hands-free and 100% free SE traffic.

Hey max, the usual response you get to threads like these are,

Social media
List building
Article marketing
Blogging
SEO
YouTube
Guest posting
Forum posting
Etc

If you want to build traffic to your site and want fast results then I'd recommend paid traffic. You can still build traffic with all the methods mentioned above, but it's gonna take up a lot of time.

You're better off mastering one method rather than trying all of these at once.. but to be honest I rarely see newbies that stick to any of these methods to build traffic, simply because it takes too long to get the ball rolling.

If you ask me, you're better off going with paid traffic.

Hope this will help,

SEO is still the most powerful way to get traffic for free and you really need to invest some time and efforts in the optimization of your site.
Get great content and frequently update it
Social bookmarking sites are another powerful way to get traffic for free.
Use social networking sites for sharing valuale piece of informative content.
Get links with other sites in your niche.
Promote your site for free, most popular ones include free classified ads, submissions to directories, inclusion in various listings, etc.
Create a free product or service, Content drives most traffic when you offer something useful.
Viral content,when users like your content, they send it to their friends, post it on various sites, and promote it for free in many different ways. Viral content distributes on its own and your only task is to create it and submit it to a couple of popular sites.
Use offline promotion, still life hasn't moved completely on the Web, this can also bring you many visitors.
Include your URL in your signature, in forum, profile, email id etc.
Post on other blog, get traffic of other blogs too.
Improve your search engine ranking and get organic traffic.
Email Marketing.

Social media like facebook. twitter etc, forum posting, publish your articles on Ezinearticles like sites, youtube marketing are some of the free and best way to generate traffic for a new site.

I'm getting decent results from funnel buys, solo ads, forum marketing and click banking.

For a start free methods tend to work best first like facebook, youtube, free forums. You can even do the ''ask.com'' trick linking to your site.

Max there are hundreds of way to drive traffic, but if its a new site and you are in a hurry, paid traffic is the way to go. Else, you can focus completely on content for now and let the links come on their own.

Doing a creative link-bait / ego-bait post can work.

I recently did a World Cup Special Guru FC vs Rising Stars United football (soccer) match post.

I featured 11 'gurus' and 11 'rising stars' of the online marketing / blogging world and wrote a little match overview up as well as telling people how to create their own linkbait style post.

You have to make sure you let everyone who is featured know about it of course and many will go on to share on their social media accounts or link to you.

It's generated around 80 social media shares and handful of links already and the World Cup is not yet over so it will bring in more for sure.

Focus on content and engaging with your potential readers. Go on social media talk to them and let them know more about you.

I hate to tell you this because its not what you want to here, but to be honest with you that there is nothing for free in "Life".!
It will either cost you time or money in one way or another and the sooner you realize this the better off you will be ..

Why don't you create a real interesting couple of posts on your site and then search in Bing or Google to find other sites that you think that the people on it would be interested in your content and figure out some helpful ways to help them that would make them want to know more about you to come check out your site ...

But do this in a nice way without being a bad guy and spamming ...

Just help others and you will get what you want out...