Don't assume to have known much just because you have rank up, but exercise patience to learn well and be more useful to the forum, this will also help you have more quality post than chasing cloud.
Merits is meant to show your evolvement on the forum, it was meant to highlight quality posts but it hasn't fully achieved this purpose but arguably, anybody that has received merit is meant to be a quality poster with some knowledge of what he's sharing with the community.
Your ranking up shouldn't be seen as some achievement that you did all by yourself and your knowledge because alot of newbies get help from meriters for just trying. I see lots of merits on threads that only shows some sort of support to the user involved.
After ranking up, the next thing is to rank up your quality posts too because you might likely not get the same support you were getting as a newbie when you become a Snr/Hero member.
You're automatically seen as someone that should know what they're saying so if you don't improve, you might begin to fall short of the merits.