It's always a smart idea to have a plan of action for everything you do in business including forum marketing. You can do many of the things that you want to do, but you have to understand exactly what you want done and how it can be achieved via forum marketing. 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.
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. Lacking either one will render your results to less than desired. 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.
You won't make the connections you're hoping to make, however, if you walk right in and start posting here, there, and everywhere. Find out which hours see the greatest amount of activity and make your forum posts when the largest number of people are generally present. You can make half a dozen or so thoughtful posts answering questions or contributing something valuable. Forum marketing has rules that you have to follow, but the main one is to give value to the community via your posts. This will provide valuable info to someone who really needs it. There could be many good reasons why people do not warm up to you. It could continue reading this be that you seem like a pompous know it all. But it just depends on how you present your knowledge in the forum. Maybe you are a total expert, but you have to be careful with how others perceive you. If people do not feel right about you, then it will have a bad effect on your forum reputation. It does not matter how much you know if others do not think highly of you.
I've been in forums where a few people were chronic thread-starters. Sometimes, excess can be a negative thing when it comes to starting new threads. It's best to space new threads out to some degree instead of using them all at once.
If you can start one thread five days a week, go internet for it, but be sure you make posts, too. Human nature still rules the day when it comes to forums too. That being said, you sometimes need to have your own opinion and stand by it too. There are plenty of 'gray' areas to consider when using forum marketing. If read what he said you really want to make a positive impression, find different ways to share your knowledge.
It's really easy to make this work without spending much more than five hours a week for all your forum marketing efforts regardless of how many forums you're working with. That's nothing when you're talking about high-value marketing activity. Internet marketing can have a lot of ups and downs if you don't diversify your efforts a great deal.