Social signals are becoming important in any site ranking, some people will agree with me and some will not and that's the beauty of seo, as in seo every method do not work for every person. I posted it on other thread, will copy it here:
You can start getting backlinks from social bookmarking sites, creating a facebook page and increasing your social media (twitter,google+,facebook etc.) presence will add value to your site. Social signals are playing an important role in today's seo, so use them if you want to get long term ranking. These all can be done manually.
You can create free web 2.0 on various sites like blogger.com,wordpress.com,squidoo,tumblr etc. Keeping your web 2.0 updated will be helpful for your site. Creating pinterest account can also be useful. So all these can be done manually.