In a recent interview, Proven Media Solutions founder Dustin Siggins laid out a five-part strategy to prepare for this eventuality:

• Build a trust reservoir before the crisis, so that relevant stakeholders will stick by you.
• Ignore attacks that don’t impact stakeholders’ trust in your brand.
• Don’t be caught by surprise. Have off-the-shelf plans ready for attacks that become true crises.
• Silence is sometimes the right response in a crisis. When it’s not, keep stakeholders informed during and immediately after the crisis.
• Once the crisis is over, assess how substantial your recovery efforts should be.

Many people panic when the critics line up. But the right preparation means that you won’t spend effort you don’t need to on efforts that won’t matter. And when you do need to respond, you won’t be scrambling to catch up.

Watch the entire interview below: