One of the easiest and possibly very productive business activities is forum marketing. No matter what niche you're in, you can do this type of marketing. Just remember that some niches will have more than other forums devoted to them-though most will have a few high traffic forums to choose from.
Some business owners also prefer to skip this option in pursuit of other 'high value' methods of marketing. As an Internet marketer you can use this method to meet many of the goals you set for yourself.
Make your first step one that involves establishing a good reputation so that you'll be viewed as an authority or expert in your niche. A failure in either task will net results that are not at all optimal. But before you can accomplish those two objectives, you have to be seen. But you're not interested in having your entire day spent on forums. After all, there are other things you need to do to market your business too.
But coming in and taking over with a large number of posts in a short amount of time will be counter-productive. Figure out when the most members are present and time your posts during those peak times. Make sure the posts you do provide are quality posts rather than simply confirming what others are saying or going repeating points already made. Forums that are new to you should always be explored, and there are things to search for upon your arrival. You need to think about why you want to join this forum, which can be determined by looking around. When you are doing forum postings for marketing purposes, it really matters. For instance, some forum owners and members despise online marketers. This is something that will probably not occur if the owner is not very fond of IMers like yourself. You can sometimes find that out by reading the forum rules. The absence of links, and signatures, at the bottoms of posts is a clear sign online marketing is not allowed. The vast majority of forums, even if they allow signatures, don't allow you to directly market to the community anyway. They are preventing a billboard effect from taking over their forum by not allowing ads to show up.
You will have to be a laid back type of authority. If you frequent the forums a lot, you will come into view it many people. There are those that will always try to belittle you. There will be members to like to complain. A majority of member will ignore these people, which will make them drop out of sight. This is how things are going to be in social media and forums. So you have to determine what is important to you. If you want it to work, then you must do the required essentials that will get you by.
Even if you belong to ten forums in your niche, you can be an active member in all of them in less than an hour a day, five days a week. It doesn't get much higher in value than that when it comes to marketing. Internet marketing can have a lot of ups and downs if you don't diversify your efforts a great deal.