By now you’re familiar with the story of a young man who tried to commit suicide last week in Manhattan. He jumped from the window of a tall apartment building and landed on a Dodge Charger which, miraculously, saved his life.

The fact that a car managed to break the man’s fall was only a hot story for a few hours.  But today, what are we talking about? The horrible woman who went on record complaining that her Dodge Charger was damaged...and the thousands of comments in social networks and on comments pages ridiculing the car itself. 

Maria McCormack (nee horrible woman) told the NY Post "I want to meet [jumper Tom Magill] and say, 'Why? Why my car out of all the cars in the city?'"  McCormack had told the Post in Thursday's interview, "I wonder how he feels now that he made it. Does he feel like an idiot? I hope he's OK. But I just want to know why.”

It didn’t take long for the Gothamist, HuffingtonPost, Gawker and others to post stories about McCormack’s response. While readers certainly reacted, many of them used the comments sections and social networks to make fun not just of McCormack, but of her beloved Dodge Charger:

petejayhawk [#1249]
I am appalled that someone thinks of a Dodge Charger as a sports car.

Astigmatism [#1950]
Also, it's described as a "$14,000 muscle car." Why do I suspect that this was a 190hp V6 bought used from Enterprise, painted bright red with maybe a racing stripe down the front?

 From Gawker: 

She spoke to the Post... “I want to meet [Tom Magill] and say, 'Why? Why my car out of all the cars in the city?'"

Yeah Tom, why the hell did you have to pick that exact moment to try and kill yourself, and why pick that red beauty 400 feet below? It's a Dodge Charger for Christ's sake!

"I wonder how he feels now that he made it. Does he feel like an idiot?" said Maria. "I hope he's OK. But I just want to know why."

He tried to kill himself, so he probably feels terrible. Tom, you owe Maria an apology for destroying her baby. And most of all, you owe her an explanation. Why did you want to kill yourself? And why did you want to kill yourself on Maria's car? It's a 2008 Dodge Charger! A fucking red one!

It's clear that the Dodge social media team (if there is one - I looked, couldn't find one) was asleep at the wheel this time. There was no official response on Twitter, or on its Facebook Wall. Nobody from Dodge joined the conversation in any of the comments sections. And this is after a Dodge car was strong enough and shatter-resistant enough that it saved a man's life from a 30+ story fall.

Dodge missed all opportunities to stave off negative feedback. But before everyone started making fun the Charger, the company should have stepped in and offered this horrible McCormack woman a new one. Not that she deserves it, or anything else shiny and new after her remarks. But the move would've shut her up, made Dodge look like a great company and it could have ultimatly steered the story into one that showcased the Charger as a safe car, one that saves lives in just about any situation. 

The best way to prevent a disaster like this is to prepare ahead of time. Every company, especially retailers like auto manufacturers, must have a social media action plan in place. This certainly isn't the first time social media has damaged a car company...Honda experienced a fan-boy freakout during one of its last launches because it, too, lacked a social media action plan.

What's in this social media action plan, you ask? Below is a very basic example outline:

• Step One: Before deciding on a final short name for your product/ company, make a possible list of usernames. 
• Step Two: Create a standard avatar (or logo) that will be used on your product/ company and all of the networks moving forward.
• Step Three: Create a social profile for your product/ company.
• Step Four: Create accounts with http://bit.ly and/or http://su.pr.  These are URL shortening services that also carry metrics, so that you will be able to easily track who is clicking on the links you’re distributing.
• Step Five: Locate the discussion forums that are most relevant for your product/ company. 
• Step Six: Seed each of your networks and profile pages with some initial content. 
• Step Seven: Ideally, you will be using these networks to crowdsource ideas and leads and to build your community well ahead of product/ company completion.
• Step Eight: On the day of product/ company launch, let all of your networks know.
• Step Nine: Set up monitoring accounts. Visit http://socialoomph.com and set up a keyword alert for your username and for all other keywords associated with your content.  Set the alert to email you three times a day. Visit http://www.google.com/alerts to set up a Google News Alert for your username, for team members’ bylines and for relevant keywords.
• Step Ten: If something starts to go wrong, how do you react?  Who's on your team, what resources are they using and how quickly are you firing back a response?

Then, the following tasks should be completed each day unless otherwise noted.

• Check bit.ly and/or su.pr
• Check your username at http://www.samepoint.com and http://www.socialmention.com to see how/ if others are syndicating your content
• Check your website’s metrics tool to monitor your traffic. Where are people coming from?  What are they clicking on most? What are their entry points and leave points?  How long do they spend on your site? Do you recognize any IPs?
• Check in with your social networks three times each day.  Don’t just monitor - contribute to the conversation. 
• Check in with discussion forums three times each day.  Again, don’t just monitor - contribute.
• Make sure to read the emails from SocialOomph to see how your content is being distributed.

Every organization, regardless of how big or how small, needs a social media action plan.

And at the very least, read what the hell is being said about you and get your communications team talking to people to mitigate damage.