How to set a mention baseline before you need one

How to set a mention baseline before you need one
It was a quiet Monday — the worst time to start, which is exactly why a B2B payroll platform started then. Calm is when you measure normal.

The turn: instead of one number, they logged four. Daily mention volume averaged over 30 days. Sentiment ratio (positive-to-negative). Share of voice against two named rivals. And response-trigger threshold — the volume that means 'something's happening.'

They set that trigger at twice the 30-day average plus a sentiment swing of 10 points. Six weeks later a pricing rumor pushed mentions to 2.4x baseline; the alert fired in eleven minutes instead of someone noticing the next afternoon.

Without a baseline, every spike looks like a crisis and every dip looks fine. With one, the data tells you which is which.

The takeaway: a baseline isn't a report — it's the tripwire that decides when you wake people up.