Not every PR crisis affects each company in the same way. That’s because not every crisis is the same, and not every company has an appropriate response to that crisis. Amy’s Baking Company faced a unique crisis after their television appearance—but their response was equally disastrous.

With that in mind, here are six ways that your company should prepare for a PR crisis, as well as how to address one if (or when) it hits:

1. Create a written crisis plan

As Mike Tyson once said, “Everybody has plans until they get hit.” What will help your company stick to a plan once a PR crisis hits is having a written document outlining what to do.

Your crisis plan should outline the following:

–    Who are your crisis communication coordinators? These are the people who decide that you’re facing a PR emergency and that you need to execute the rest of your plan.

–     Where and how will those coordinators meet? In person? Online? In a Slack chat or Skype call?

–     Who will act as spokespeople? If the media contacts your company, a select group of people should field all inquiries.

–     Whose roles will be temporarily affected, and how? If a crisis is serious, you may need to inform the tech team that traffic to the website could increase, a responsibility that will take them off their current role. HR may need to take the time to train executives in how to talk to the media.

Once you have this plan in place, dealing with the fallout will be much easier than doing everything on an ad hoc basis.

2. Invest in social listening and monitoring tools

One way to preempt, plan for, or even avoid a PR crisis before it gets serious is to have social media monitoring tools in place that can alert you to rising sentiments among customers or industry experts.

Investing in a good social media monitoring platform is a good policy in general, as you can use it to respond to regular customer service issues or to capitalize on fun trends. You may also be able to contain a singular customer issue before it becomes a viral sensation.

3. React quickly—but not until you have the facts

As a PR crisis escalates, it’s critically important that your company react as quickly as possible to contain the problem as well as address increasing public and/or media scrutiny. Waiting days, or even hours, can compound the problem, presenting you as calloused or unfeeling.

On the other hand, a lack of information about what exactly is happening can doom a hurried PR response. Take the time to gather your intel and confer among your communications team before putting out your official statements.

4. Use every channel available

Any modern business will have a multitude of communication channels available — website, blog, a variety of social media platforms, etc. Use each of them to push out your responses and updates to your crisis until the issue has settled.

Here’s why: posting crisis updates to your Facebook and Twitter, but continuing to post and promote your business as usual on Instagram gives Instagram users the (rightful) excuse to jump all over you for appearing to ignore your crisis. You’ll also look as though you’re trying to have it both ways—addressing your crisis while maintaining business as usual. A PR crisis is not business as usual.

5. Show your humanity through heartfelt apology and ownership

One of the most consistent tactics we’ve seen across all successful PR crisis responses is when a company takes complete ownership of the issue.

Use Buffer, for example: they didn’t blame a singular employee, the hackers who breached their system, their customers for not being able to take a joke, and so on. They accepted the blame and expressed that acceptance via a real apology.

When you apologize and accept blame, you demonstrate the humanity behind your corporate veneer. People are much more willing to forgive humans than brands.

6. Engage in a long-term content marketing campaign

One of the long-term effects of a PR crisis is that it continues to haunt your Google search results, sometimes for years to come.

To combat these painful search results, you should create and continue a content marketing campaign—blogging, contributing articles to third-party sites under your name, finding ways to get the business featured in writeups by reporters and news organizations (for good reasons, not bad).

This is a good marketing strategy for businesses in general: You should do all of these things in order to improve your search ranking, boost your domain authority, and better your brand. It has the added benefit of working as an anecdote to unflattering writeups related to your crisis as well.

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In a perfect world, people and customers would judge your business solely on the merits of your products and services. Unfortunately, PR crises can strike at any moment, and they’re not always fair to the businesses that suffer them.

But as long as you recognize the power of the PR crisis, have a plan in place to address it, and execute that plan to the best of your ability, you’ll be ahead of the curve.

This article was submitted by Eric Goldschein, a staff writer at Fundera.