The first two methods of attracting attention cost money unless you obtain the photos illegally or photoshop them or maybe you’re a hot chick yourself. The last one has the most potential but humor blogs have enough trouble going viral on their own never mind a toilet seat humor site.
But still in 2011, I’d say the way to incorporate Leo Di Milo’s social strategies in banal niches is to incorporate humor. A joke page on it’s own may be enough to garner a few natural links and tweets. However, toilet seat cartoons and videos would be the best way to get a social aspect(and social links) to your niche(and there’s humor in every niche). It does cost money to do quality cartoons and videos. You could also do a theme song.
This is easier said than done and advertisers end up spending millions for campaigns that don’t work. Unless you are very creative, SEO has a much higher Return on Investment.
And SEO is still very much Google. There’s Bing on the scene but Bing goes after much the same market as Google(the casual internet user). You don’t advertise on Gossip Girl and Parenthood to get tech savvy traffic. The only search engine that really seems to be going after the tech savvy market is Blekko with it’s slash tags and ability to view SEO results for your site(the casual internet user definitely doesn’t care about the sites SEO results).
Since Google and Bing are both targeting the casual internet user(as they are the ones that click on ads), we can use what that target market wants to determine what direction Google is going in the future.