The answer to this question is, it very much depends on the situation. A manufacturer of safety equipment needs to stay somewhat serious, while a local bar has license to get raunchy when necessary.

In most cases, it’s important to stay on topic. A company that makes speedboats shouldn’t be weighing in on the newest appointment to the Supreme Court, though a post on water safety tips would be appropriate, as would a conversational post such as “What’s your favorite place for water sports?” Essentially, anything that could be connected to water -even a thin connection- would be appropriate.

While the exact content is dependent on the type of business, Facebook pages should maintain a balance between internal and external posts. That is to say, it’s acceptable –essential even- for a brand to post news about itself on its Facebook page. However, not all content on the page should be focused on the brand. It’s important to add value to Facebook fans, and if all the content on the page is about the brand, people will probably lose interest. However, there are plenty of exceptions here too.

Some brands get away with social media updates focused solely on themselves. For example, if you point your browser to facebook.com/google, you’ll find post after post about … Google. They’re big enough and interesting enough that they can focuses nearly all of their updates on themselves, and get vibrant interactions on every post they make. But this won’t be the case for the majority of brands.

Think of social media updates like almost like a magazine or newspaper. Creating an editorial calendar can be a useful way to stay organized and establish what kinds of content will be best for your Facebook age.

Once you’ve determined the topics to post about, of course another questions comes up… whether or not these posts resonate with your Facebook community. This is a whole other topic, but here’s the quick answer to that question: experiment! Try posting news articles, ask pointed questions, ask more general questions, find out what energizes the crowd.