Every niche has many forums dedicated to its discussion. All that's needed now is to find the forums that get the lion's share of the traffic in your niche so you can put your plan into motion. The entire plan doesn't have to take nearly as long as you might imagine. Alas, you will have to put more than a little time and effort into it if you really want it to pay off for you. Only you can decide the best route to follow for your business.
It's always important to know why you're pursuing a particular marketing method. So if you try out forum marketing, you should have an idea of how it will be beneficial for you and your business, before you spend any time doing it. Essentially, forum marketing is networking with individuals and businesses that are similar to your own. Not only are you networking, but you're engaging in relationship marketing. As you'll see when you start posting on the forums, the latter (relationship building) is to key component of it all. People like to use forms to build the brand name of their business, something that cannot be done very easily elsewhere. It's so easy to do this, as long as you offer value in everything you do. So when you do this, your form reputation will skyrocket - that's what offering value will do for you. There are plenty of rules in forum marketing, but the first one is to provide good information. This will end up helping others who want valuable information. People can become resentful or insecure for a lot of reasons. It could be that you seem like a pompous know it all. But it just depends on your behavior in the forum. Yes, it could be that you are very experienced, but you have to be cognizant of how others perceive you. If other members do not feel warm and fuzzy when it comes to you then it will be 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.
Any time you join a forum, you have control over your own persona or how people view you. You can have any type of personality that you want. But do not get crazy with this because you cannot predict the future. If you tend to be loud, you can stop this and do not do it any longer. Many people are not the aggressive types or the Type A or alpha male business killers you are. But it all comes down to your decision about how you want others discover this to perceive you. Depending on your niche, you may not want people to know how you really are. So do not lose sight of goals and how all of this will play into things. It is possible that, after reading this, that you may already know most of what we have discussed. Other than specific rules for each forum, most of what you have to know is just social common sense. Remember that contributions matter. The more you contribute, the more the community will accept you, which is beneficial for your marketing efforts.