I talked about this a bit in this article:
http://www.crowdcrux.com/proven-crowdfu ... r-creator/The best way to initially reach Kicsktarter backers is during the honeymoon period described in that article. After that period, it's much harder and you usually have to do it indirectly (through news stories, communities, etc).
KIckstarter doesn't disclose their algorithm, but in my experience, the highest correlation is pledges per day. I think Kicktraq has some great tools to figure out which projects are trending based on activity and pledge growth which can be used to assess how you are ranking in Kickstarter's eyes.