Abhord Quickstart: A Practical Guide for New Users (March 2026 Refresh)
What’s new in this edition
- Cross‑model orchestration: run one survey across multiple LLMs in parallel with balanced sampling and consistent formatting.
- Mentions v2: clearer tagging for direct, indirect, and implicit brand mentions; improved canonicalization of aliases.
- Sentiment v2: span‑level sentiment with intensity, mixed/neutral handling, and multilingual support.
- Share of Voice normalization: options to weight by model market share or treat all models equally; co‑mention handling improved.
- Competitor Watchlists: topic‑based tracking, spike alerts, and “new claim” detection from LLM answers.
- Action Recipes: one‑click follow‑ups (briefs, FAQ gaps, positioning tests) generated from your insights.
1) Initial setup and configuration
- Create a workspace and project
- Workspace: invite your core team (content, product marketing, research). Assign roles: Admin, Analyst, Viewer.
- Project: name by theme (e.g., “SMB CRM—US/EN Q2”). Set default language and region.
- Connect model providers
- Add API keys for your preferred providers. In Model Lineup, pick at least 3 heterogeneous models (e.g., one frontier, one cost‑efficient, one open‑weight) for robustness.
- Set default parameters: temperature 0.2–0.4 for factual tasks; 0.5–0.7 for ideation. Keep max tokens consistent across models.
- Define entities and aliases
- Add your brand, product lines, and common misspellings. Example: “AcmeCRM,” “Acme CRM,” “Acme Suite.”
- Add top competitors and their aliases. Enable auto‑suggest to catch emergent players.
- Configure mention taxonomy and rules
- Mentions v2 options:
- Direct: exact brand/product reference.
- Indirect: brand‑controlled property (e.g., “the Acme Scheduler”).
- Implicit: clear reference without name (e.g., “the CRM with the red rocket logo”).
- Choose whether to count implicit mentions toward Share of Voice (SoV); default: on, with 0.5 weight.
- Privacy, retention, and notifications
- Set data retention (90–365 days). Mask PII in prompts by default.
- Enable Slack or email digests: weekly rollups and spike alerts.
2) Running your first survey across LLMs
- Choose a Survey Recipe
- Common starting points:
- Brand Discovery: “Who are the leading options for [