Well, if you feel you have the necessary knowledge to rate teams, you could try rating teams in the RMT forum. If you ever feel like you're interested in rating but need a push in the right direction, you can PM an official team rater and see if they are willing to help you out. A list of team raters can be found here.
Again, if you feel like you have a good grasp of competitive Pokemon knowledge, you can consider posting in the Smogon Metagames forums, in one of the subforums you're interested in, such as OU, LC, etc. Contribute by making intelligent posts and you'll be well on your way towards being known as a good poster!
If you ever feel like you need someone's guidance or help with competitive Pokemon, you could always sign-up for the next Battling 101 round, where you'll likely get paired with a tutor that can help you with the game and integrate you more with the community if you sign-up in time. The schedule for the rounds can be found here.
There's also The Smog, as you brought up. If you are a good writer, you can pitch an idea to one of the Smog staff members. If one of them doesn't reply, you should consider PMing another (for example, one of my close friends here, Setsuna, usually replies to PMs quickly, and he leads the magazine too). If the one you sent the PM to doesn't reply, they are probably busy, so there's no harm in asking another Smog staff member. Take the initiative!
Other ways to contribute are by hosting tournaments. If you have a good tournament idea, you can send it to one of the tournament directors for them to look at. Read the tournament rules for more info in that aspect.
Lastly, a good way to really get to know people is by visiting IRC, #dreamworld. Look here for ways to get there, and if none of that works, you can always use the simple to use mibbit.
Hopefully that gave you some ideas!