It is always a smart thing to have a plan for how you want to tackle things in business and this also means forum marketing. It will be easy to get what you want, but you should have an idea of what that is and how to use forums to get it. Successful marketers get that way by using this train of thought. First, they learn as much as possible about different marketing strategies. Then they take that knowledge and figure out the best ways to leverage it.
Anytime you do a particular marketing method online, it is good to have some background knowledge on the method itself. You won't know the benefits of online forum marketing unless you understand its benefits beforehand. You will be interacting with people on the forums, some of which will have businesses that you actually can network with. This type of marketing is about building strong relationships with these people and businesses, which goes far beyond typical networking. The latter is the most important of the two, and it's what you'll use in most other forms of marketing. Using forums for business reasons entails a different approach in which you build your brand. The key is to offer "over the top" value for everything that you have, thus gaining exposure will benefit your brand name immensely. If you offer so much value that people won't forget, your reputation will grow leaps and bounds on the forum.
You can quickly look at the signatures if you want to know if marketing can be done on the forum. See if the signatures have links. This is the usual practice by forums if they don't mind members placing their business links in their signatures. When you start to frequent plenty of forums, you will be able to determine what the members can do in terms of marketing. Also you can tell what is allowed by looking at the signatures. For example, they might have numerous pictures and loaded with links. This will show if a forum really likes people to market their goods and services.
Take a little time to watch and figure out who's considered important on the forums before you even think about starting to network. In general, there are a few people who carry a lot of sway on the boards. There is some influence to this based on the sheer number of forum members too. Forums with long histories and large memberships will have more influence bringers than smaller forums. This is something that isn't constant throughout forums. Sometimes it's the moderators who have the most influence. Usually a senior moderator who's been there forever and many people basically try to win favor and acceptance. Once you've identified them, it's time to start building relationship with these members.
So, understand that social marketing and forum marketing are somewhat alike. Most people can tell that forum marketing is so close to social marketing. They webpage are very closely connected to relationship marketing, which is why you should learn as much as you can about it.