11 Feb Why You Should Kill Your Zombie Social Media Accounts

Do you have one or more zombie social media accounts? Long ago abandoned and left for dead, they molder in the dark corners of the internet until an unsuspecting visitor stumbles upon them. The visitor then makes the horrifying discovery of your business’s Facebook account – with the last post made in 2019! Or how about your Instagram account, which still exists, yet bereft of life since 2018?

Don’t be surprised if those seeking your social media accounts expecting to find a living, vibrant presence they can engage with flee the scene. Zombie social media accounts may be forgotten by you, but they’re definitely not gone. And they can scare off your potential customers.

Are Your Social Media Accounts in Zombieland?

One of the duties of our Virtual Stacks Systems content marketing team is to find social media accounts for our clients’ social media accounts to follow. For business-to-business (B2B) accounts, we look for businesses that could be customers for what our clients are selling – or, at least, are in an industry in which other interested parties may want to engage with our clients. Building brand presence and brand credibility for our clients are objectives, as well.

However, too many times, we find a Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn or YouTube account that hasn’t had a new post since 2018. This is bad because it raises the wrong type of questions to visitors. Is this company still in business? Is this company struggling? Why aren’t there new posts? Do the owners just not care?

That last question is especially insidious. It implies that if you don’t care enough about your business’s social media presence and the opportunity it presents to engage with potential customers, you may not care enough about providing a great customer experience. You may not care about communicating with your target audience, or getting their feedback – even if it’s just in the form of likes.

Still, the case could very well be that you started an account on several social platforms because that’s what you thought you needed to do. When you found that some (or none) of them got the results you expected, you stopped posting because it seemed to be a waste of your business’s time and resources.

That’s completely understandable, yet this is the risk of taking the DIY approach to social media. Not every social media platform is right for every business. For example, if your products or services aren’t photogenic – or if you don’t have the ability to produce high-quality photographs or graphics – you won’t attract many followers on the highly visual Instagram. Our blog post – “Is Instagram Right for Your Business?” covers this topic in greater detail.

Why Your Social Media Accounts Underperformed

A combination of factors may have contributed to the disappointing results of your social media accounts, including the following:

No clear-cut objectives for what you wanted to achieve – Did you want your social media accounts to drive traffic to your website to generate leads? According to Sprout Social, the primary goal for small business is typically to engage local followers and grow a greater community presence. For start-ups, it’s to build awareness for a new product and generate leads for it. If your social media posts were random with no specific call-to-action (CTA), visitors probably moved on without visiting your website or returning to your social media site.

A typical mistake is the failure to set SMART goals, provided courtesy of Sprout Social:

• Specific: Your goals should be clear, simple and defined.
• Measurable: This is where analytics come in. You want a goal that has one or more metrics.
• Achievable: Is it achievable or is it not possible within your resources?
• Realistic: With your current resources of time and money, is it possible to achieve your goals?
• Time-sensitive: Every goal needs a time frame, whether it’s one year or several months.

As Sprout Social points out, “This approach to goal-setting results in direct action that’s backed up by data.”

Unrealistic expectations – Hopefully, the days of wanting a video or social post to “go viral” are over. In social media, slow but steady wins the race. The quality of followers is more important than the quantity. If you expected hundreds of followers who would immediately become customers and dropped your social involvement when it didn’t happen, that isn’t how social media operates. You had already set yourself up for failure.

Not understanding the members of your target market and their needs – Unless you know exactly who you’re selling to, you won’t be able to reach them. Our blog post – “Can Social Media Get Your Message Out Effectively?” – covers the importance of targeting messaging to best reach your audience.

Poor-quality content – This is an easy trap for a small-to-medium-size business to fall into. Without a dedicated content writer or digital marketing expert/team on board, the fate of your social media is in the hands of whoever is assigned or volunteered to do the job. The typical result is off-key messaging, lack of understanding of the target market and the inability to speak their language. Poor grammar and typos are also frequent pitfalls. Such an effort comes across as random and amateurish – which presumably is not the brand image you want to project.

Too much hard-sell – Even good, experienced salespeople can make this mistake on social media. In a face-to-face situation with a potential customer or client, you do a lot of listening to their needs and expectations, then craft your sales pitch accordingly. You learn what they want before you tell them how your business can deliver. The same holds true for social media. In addition, use social media to position your business as a trusted resource for information. People will remember you when they’re ready to buy!

Deciding What to Do About Your Zombie Social Media Accounts

As the above factors imply, zombie social media accounts can successfully be restored to a healthy life that produces the desired results for your business. But this is a job for a team of digital marketing professionals who have the industry knowledge, resources and time to put a strategy in place and write engaging content that’s relevant to the target audience. Our services include assessing the business goals of our clients and aligning their social media platforms (and messaging) to help achieve them. Yes, we did get a little ahead of our regular blatant self-promotion, but this is the time to make our point.

But what if you have no interest in revitalizing your social media efforts? Or decide to let underperforming accounts remain inactive while you focus on those that are delivering results? Our advice is to delete them. Having no social presence is better than having abandoned accounts that just hang around and reflect badly on your business.

In the case of those who are very involved with their Facebook and Twitter accounts (for example), but left Instagram alone after getting low engagement, deleting the unused account will improve your business’s professional image instead of giving the appearance that you neglected your housecleaning. People want to do business with a company that pays attention to detail, no matter how small!

And Now for Our Blatant Self-Promotion, Part II

Zombie movies and TV shows may be entertaining, but the effect that zombie social media accounts can have on your business is frightening. Our digital marketing pros are ready to bring your social media presence to robust life! In addition to social media services, we offer PPC advertising, website design and redesign, SEO marketing, review management services and much more!

Contact us today to get started!