Social media can be loosely defined as the movement of community contributions in an effort to help one another and improve search engine ranking. There’s plenty of giving, taking, promoting, and marketing. In an effort to also contribute, here are 5 great ways to contribute to social media from ReadWriteWeb.

Provide Fresh Content - Being able to provide a fresh perspective on the news goes a long way to helping out with social media. Every thought and opinion is unique even if all parties agree.

Spread the Link Love - Spreading the link love is actually one of the best things you can do for social media. Not only does it help with networking, but for social media this is a great way for users to find great content.

Roll Your Own - What’s revolutionary about social media content is that it can be based on standards like RSS and XML. To quote Phil Glockner of Scribkin, “this lends a lot of re-interpretation of the data available for the taking.”

Share Your Findings - Since applications can serve a multitude of purposes for users, your reasons for using one app could be used for entirely different reasons by someone else. However, the discovery of these purposes can’t happen unless you continue to share.

Stay Active - While it’s perfectly fine to be a lurker, if something strikes your interest, don’t be afraid to voice your opinions and share your knowledge of the subject.

Sharing Really is Caring - These are just a handful of great ways to contribute to social media. Keep in mind that contributions to social media are also beneficial for other niches and the web community overall.

I totally agree with these. With social media and social networking spreading like wildfire people should be looking towards things like Facebook, Multiply, Connect and BlogIt and Google Friend Connect.