Signal Intake Triage (Onboarding)

Signal Intake Triage (Onboarding)

1. 01

   Define the client's decision calendar before opening any monitoring feed

   List the three to five decisions the retainer actually funds this quarter (content calendar locks, product launch windows, media buys). A signal only earns a slot if it can change one of those dates.

2. 02

   Assign each decision a signal class and a named owner

   Split classes across discovery, change detection, and people-first streams so no single lens carries the whole account. Name the strategist accountable for each class, not the tool.

3. 03

   Set a baseline snapshot of the client's current competitive and search position

   Capture starting metrics before monitoring begins, including AI answer visibility for the brand's top ten queries. Without a baseline, week-six spikes look like growth when they are noise.

4. 04

   Configure change detection on the five to ten pages that matter most

   Prioritize competitor pricing pages, client policy pages, and category-defining landing pages. Page-level diffing on a tight list beats broad crawling every time.

5. 05

   Seed a people-first watchlist of 15 to 25 named voices

   Track operators, analysts, and buyers who publish firsthand, then filter out secondhand mentions. Curated digests of primary content outperform keyword alerts for early cultural shifts.

6. 06

   Run a two-week calibration window and log every alert received

   Tag each alert as actionable, contextual, or noise. If noise exceeds roughly 70 percent of volume, tighten thresholds before the first client-facing report ships.

7. 07

   Publish the triage rules to the client in one page

   State what gets escalated, who decides, and the response window (same day for competitive pricing moves, weekly for cultural signals). Agreement up front prevents scope arguments later.