You can find as many forums as you want that are relevant to your niche. Then all that's left is combining a high-traffic forum with a brilliant marketing plan of your own. That may sound like a very long time, and if so then maybe you believe all the sales letters. But if you want to get maximum value from your efforts, it will require some time and patience on your part. When it's your business on the line, you'll have to decide how to proceed.
Marketing online can be difficult at times, especially if you have no idea about the method you are using, or even how to use it. For online marketing to work for you, specifically in forums, you should know why this method is viable. If you want to do forum marketing, you should know that it's very similar to networking, but with a specific audience, not just businesses. This type of marketing is about building strong relationships with these people and businesses, which goes far beyond typical networking. As you'll see when you start posting on the forums, the latter (relationship building) is to key component of it all. You can build your brand, additionally, which is another reason why using forums is so different. It's so easy to do this, as long as you offer value in everything you do. When you are synonymous with value, then your forum reputation will grow. Even though forum marketing has rules that you have to follow, the key ones have to do with giving back valuable information to your forum members. Doing this will help someone else in the forum. People can become resentful or insecure for a lot of reasons. One might be because you think that you know everything. But it is based upon how you act in the forums. You probably are an expertise in your field, but this might make others think that you are a show off. If other members do not feel warm and fuzzy when it comes to you then it will be link hard in the long run. You can be the smartest person in the world and it will not matter if others do not want to hear what you have to say.
Don't even think about networking on a forum until you know who the 'top dog' on the forum is, so to speak. Sometimes there is a group of people that could be at the 'top of the heap' on the forum. There is some influence to this based on the sheer number of forum members too. The longer the forums have been around and more members it has, the greater the number of people who influence the forums will be. It really will vary from one forum to the next-often the influence bringers are moderators. When it's a moderator you'll see a lot of people trying to curry favor. These are the people you want to get to know as quickly as possible on the forum.
So, understand that social marketing and forum marketing are somewhat alike. When you look at it, forum marketing is another way to do social marketing. They are very closely connected to relationship marketing, which is why you should learn as much as you can about it.