You don't.
Wow...great advice from a marketing major. While there are multiple layers to that answer...the overriding theme is you don't...at least you don't do it just to get eyeballs.
Social Networks inherently must be viral. Zuckerberg had half of Harvard within a few days. I bet you've never seen a MySpace, LiveJournal, or Hi5 add. Users have to want to talk about it. I joined facebook early 
after a friend from CU asked if the site was at my school. Seth Godin has a joke about BMW (more so a joke about their competition), that BMW's marketing department is called 'engineering.' The same must hold true with your site...your marketing is called 'coding.'
Don't get me wrong, you must launch, you must use PR, blogs, other online communities, everything you possibly can to find you champions, to find the people who will help your product spread. If your product isn't good enough though...the champions stay quiet. You can't pay them either. Viral can't be bought.
There are certainly ways around it. Tagged, according to TechCrunch, may be the fastest growing social network. Tagged strongly entices/tricks you into entering your email password, so that they can access you entire contact list. Questionable tactic...but it's working. A network trying to generate buzz around UW is 'chalk' guerrilla marketing like crazy, advertising in our newspaper, and working hard to get their brand known (it works...but I don't know how many people are actually signing up). It takes a lot to launch a product in a crowded space...but the value proposition of creating yet another profile has to stick. It has to keep the people coming back.
Josh Kopelman, writer of Redeye VC, calls it 'catch and keep,' rather than 'catch and release.' He says the social networking winners right now entice users to come back, spend hours, invite their friends etc. Catch
and release, however, is the buzz generating, blogosphere post crazy, banner ad buying sites that create huge hype, get people to check out the site...and then never come back. It's like fish swimming upstream...constantly fighting (and paying...a LOT) to get more people to join the site while the original demographic stopped showing up. These sites are where, as my advertising professor often says, "no amount advertising will ever get someone to buy a crappy product twice."
In this web craze, every site developer better play the role of VP of Marketing until you are at the point where you can afford to and need to hire one. How are you marketing your social network? Find an influencer (in your target market), figure out why they aren't using it, then figure out how to make it something they can't live without. Then they'll want to talk about it.
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