Besides just avoiding low quality links the best thing to do is only do things you would normally to increase brand awareness.  Only go for quality links that will drive traffic to your site.  They will also help increase your rankings,   Link bait is also a great way to get people to link to your site and share your content too.   Have you looked into doing some Press Releases if you have news worthy things to talk about or quality guest blogging? They are all good ways that will not get you penalized by google.