it's hard to get merit points especially if you are new to this forum but post quality and post constractive posts have the chance to give you the merit so you must have a quality post to do before you can claim merit points.
Claim merit points ?
That is wrong choice of words and can be misleading for new members. There is no way , you can claim any merit points here. You are right with the quality part though. A user has to make good quality posts here and then he can expect merit points from other members. There is still no guarantee of getting merit points as it is up to the members reading the posts and the current available merit points they have. So even if you make exceptional posts, there is no way to claim any merit points for them.