With many federal agencies using social media as a tool to get the word out about disaster preparedness and breaking news, the Centers for Disease Control recently made headlines for keeping followers updated on how to deal with the type of disaster many of us go to bed every night dreading...the inevitable zombie apocalypse. 

Last week the CDC posted on its blog an in-depth post entitled "Social Media: Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse." The post included a brief history of our brain eating friends, as well as what you may need to stock up on to deal with the moment your Uncle Humpbert who died when you were 7 shows up at your doorstep looking to take a bite out of your arm. A standard emergency plan is then outlined, including such helpful tips as "Plan your evacuation route. When zombies are hungry they won't stop until they get food (i.e., brains), which means you need to get out of town fast!"

All joking aside, the CDC's Emergencey Preparedness and Response team took the zombie angle to make salient points about how to deal with a more probable scenario such as a hurricane or earthquake. Tips like keeping updated stocks of First Aid supplies and non-perishable food, as well as pointers like designating an "out-of-state" contact in case of emergency can be applied the types of catastrophes more likely to emerge at some point.

The CDC's blog post generated enough buzz on social media that the agency's official emergency preparedness Twitter feed has seen a sizable spike in followers in the days since it was originally posted. According to OhMyGov Media Monitoring, on May 15^th, the day before the post went live @cdcemergency boasted 1.265 Million followers, in the subsequent ten days the account has picked up over 5,000 new followers.

The success of the CDC's post in terms of both readership, hell even the New York Times picked up on it, and social media popularity are further proof that a bit of social media savvy combined with a knowing sense of humor can help federal agencies get notice for their more important initiatives.

Chances are most people who read the CDC's zombie post did not give a great deal of thought to disaster preparedness beforehand, but by hooking readers with a clever premise the agency was able to presumably get its more serious message across. Now if only the IRS can find a way to make filing your 1040 snarky and fun...