Ok, here comes my serious answer...

First off I just want to say I'm no expert and whenever someone says do something this way or that way, I find it a complete turn off.

In my opinion the best thing to do is to experiment and let your ears be the judge.

If you're desperate for a rule, then I really don't know for sure but I would speculate that the first stage would be compression, to make sure the signal's at a good level. Then I'd EQ the signal to either beef up the sound or thin it down (depending on what sound I was after). Then lastly I would add reverb to make the sound "fit in" with the other sounds in the mix and also to generally add a spacial dimension to the sound.

One again, I'm no expert and these rules are NOT carved in stone (well... not for me anyway).

Good luck!