I was struggling to think of some way to tie in Halloween with PR for this week’s post, but I struck out worse than A-Rod in a division clinching game. Instead, I opted to settle for a related theme: zombies! For some inexplicable reason, zombies have exploded onto the pop culture scene over the past few years. They’ve been an increasingly hot topic ever since Romero’s Night of the Living Dead way back in ’68, but the past ten years have really been the Decade of the Living Dead.

Movies like 28 Days Later, Shawn of the Dead, and Zombieland have become classics in their own lifetime. As usual, the internet has hopped on the bandwagon with sites like zombieme.com and dozens of Facebook apps. But the rising interest has not been limited to the media. Zombie pub crawls featuring dozens of people made up to look as if they’ve just risen from the grave (and possibly been hit by a few cars on the way over), and taking over towns for a night of drinking and staggering have sprung up across the nation. Actually, that’s more of a typical weekend in some college towns than an example of zombie fandom.

Right about now, you may be wondering where the turn is in this blog. What do zombies have to do with public relations or social media? In truth, not a whole lot (unless you look at my list of clients I’d least like to represent where they fall just after the devil and Mel Gibson). But if you’re willing to follow a loose metaphor and learn a thing or two about monitoring your social media presence, stick around.

With the rise of social media, anyone connected to the internet can be a critic. Dedicated aggregators like Yelp, Kudzu and Angie’s List have made big business of collecting and organizing reviews, but posts on Facebook walls or tweets can be just as influential. Hopefully, your brand has mostly positive comments on these networks, but you’ll inevitably pick up a few negative ones no matter how good your service or product is.

Think of these negative comments as zombies. They wander around aimlessly, shuffling amid millions of similarly ornery zombies (comments) until BAM! Some poor sap stumbles into them while researching your brand and gets a bite taken out of his brains (interest in pursuing your brand). Before you know it, that prospective client, franchisee or consumer has read enough bad things about you to take his brains (business) elsewhere. So how do you combat this zombie horde longing to munch on the gooey bits of your brand’s prospects? Read on fearless zombie killer!

To keep this ridiculous zombie motif going, let’s break it down this way. There are two tools anyone hoping to survive the zombie apocalypse (negative comments online) needs: a good lookout (monitoring) and a strong plan of attack (engagement). Monitoring, or listening, is exactly what it sounds like. Keep an ear to the ground, a finger on the pulse, and eye on the horizon. Specifically, you want to know what’s being said about you, your brand and your product, on what networks, by who and how influential those voices are.

There are dozens of tools out there to help you do this, some more effective than others. Superficially, you can use Google Alerts, Twitter search or engines like Friend Feed to catch mentions of your brand. This is a great start, especially when you search frequently and with good keywords, but these tools have their limits. If you have the budget, you really want to invest in a dedicated social media monitoring platform with an experienced team like No Limit behind the wheel. This, by the way, would be the equivalent of having Woody Harrelson’s character Tallahassee from Zombieland watching your back.

When monitoring, you want to watch for certain key comments, often grouped into one of the following categories: questions, complaints, compliments, inquiries and leads. A good monitoring platform will allow you to add word filters to your search, facilitating the organization of comments. Once you’ve got your comments squared away, its time to deal with them. Keep in mind, monitoring is a vital part of the strategy, but without coordinated engagement you can look forward to being an all-you-can-eat buffet for some chump zombie.

Engagement is the second requisite tool. Once you’ve identified a conversation, tweet, Facebook post, or blog post that mentions your brand, you have to do something with that information. The correct response to a question or complaint can build brand loyalty, resolve a nasty customer service dispute or even drawn in new franchisees or clients. The trick to engagement is fast action, which is only possible through active monitoring!

Let’s go back to the zombie comment feasting on the brains of our unlucky googler. What if you had gotten to that zombie first and given him the antidote to his malaise? Could you have prevented that encounter and regained the lost business you suffered as a result of it? Answering every negative comment online would be nearly impossible, but sincere responses to those you are able to can transform your brand image online. Whether done through the original medium of the complaint or via email, working to resolve complaints or amend customer service issues can turn the authors of those zombie comments into allies, fighting for your brand online.

Engagement works on the other side of the isle as well. When someone posts pictures of themselves with your product, make a big deal out of it! I was reading an email from a Facebook fan the other day that said the first meal she had after giving birth was ordered from one of our clients. That’s a huge testimonial that deserves to be shouted from the mountaintops. You may have brand advocates out there fighting zombies on their own time. Identifying them (through monitoring) and offering them support (through engagement) helps both your causes.

Long story short, if you get stuck with a bad image online, start keeping closer tabs on who’s saying what about your brand and get involved in those conversations. If you get stuck in a zombie apocalypse? Remember rule number one: cardio.

A Blog Post By: Brian Diggelmann (@bdiggelmann)

Brian is the founder and current president of the campaign to reclaim the term “Tier 1.”