A few weeks ago, a Recommend.ly study claimed that a whopping 56 percent of brand pages—approximately 2 million pages by my math—have fewer than 256 fans. What’s more, 31 percent had fewer than 32 fans.

The survey only polled 1.7 million Facebook pages, but that’s still some rather damning evidence.

Why the big number? I’m convinced the following reasons are responsible for the vast majority of those 2 million or so Facebook pages.

• Companies jumping in with no effective strategy for why they’re using Facebook or what content they plan to share each day.

• Small businesses that start a page and soon realize how much work is involved to grow a robust community.

• Organizations with no need to start a Facebook page forcing the issue, for whatever reason.

So what should they do? Shut ‘er down. That’s right. Just shut it down and save the time and money. Here’s my rationale:

• Some of these folks aren’t even paying attention anymore, so shutting down the page is actually better than having a page up that you’re not adding to each day (and responding to customer comments)

• If you are active, and you still have fewer than 256 fans, it might not be the best use of your time. I’m not saying the “fan count” is the end-all-be-all, but you do need some sort of critical mass on Facebook for it to be an effective use of your time.

• You can take the time you’re spending generating Facebook content and managing that community and dump it into something that is actually working. Coupon books. Events. PR. Whatever. You know what’s working—put more time into that instead of dumping it into a Facebook page that’s stuck on 123 “likes.”

What do you think? Agree with me? Should 2 million companies across the U.S. shut down their Facebook pages effective immediately.

Arik Hanson is principal of ACH Communications. A version of this post originally appeared on Communications Conversations.