Craft effective AI prompts

Be specific and target your audience

Specific prompts are key when engaging with AI – they help it understand the context and give more precise and valuable content. Firstly, identify the audience for the AI’s response. This ensures the content uses the appropriate tone and provides the information in a language accessible to the target audience.

• Good: “Explain the process of content modeling to a content creator who has no experience with a headless CMS. Avoid technical language. Use simple yet matter-of-factly language.”
• Good: “Explain the concept of gravity in terms that are easy to understand by a 14-year-old American student.”
• Bad: “Tell me about how content is modeled.”

Define the format and structure

It’s important to tell the AI how to organize the content it writes for you. This ensures you get the most useful response – a list of quick facts or several paragraphs with a detailed explanation. You can also use the prompts to adjust existing content, like in the example with sorting tables.

• Good: “List the top 10 most populous countries in bullet points.”
• Good: “Create a table with the pros and cons of using phones with Android vs. iOS vs. without any operating system. These three options go to the table header, and the pros and cons are in rows. Pro is “Yes”, con is “No”, and not applicable is an empty set symbol.”
• Good: (Put this above a table.) “Create a table like the one that’s below. The first row is a header row and must stay on the top, the first column is a label column and must stay on the left. Sort the new table by the Feature column. Move the columns so that their headers are sorted alphabetically from left to right. The new table must have all the values the table below has and only those.”
• Bad: “What are the most populous countries?”

Use simple concise language

Complex vocabulary and long-winded prompts can hinder comprehension. Brevity and simple language make the prompt accessible and ensure the AI can process it effectively.

• Good: “What is the boiling point of water?”
• Good: “Summarize the plot of ‘1984’ by George Orwell.”
• Bad: “At what temperature does dihydrogen monoxide transition to a gaseous state?”
• Bad: “I’m wondering if you can tell me what happens in that book by George Orwell that’s about a dystopian future.”

Be authoritative rather than polite

Direct and authoritative prompts are better in interactions with AI because they convey clear commands that the AI can process efficiently and deliver precise results. Polite requests are processed less effectively because they often include unnecessary words that dilute the instruction’s intent.

• Good: “Define the term ’machine learning’.”
• Bad: “Could you possibly tell me what you know about machine learning?”

Avoid ambiguity and frame your objective

Ambiguous prompts can lead to multiple interpretations. Being specific and clearly stating the goal of the prompt directs the AI to the desired outcome, whether it’s generating ideas, solving a problem, or providing information.

• Good: “Generate a report on the latest B2B digital marketing trends in the software industry.”
• Good: “Outline the steps necessary for implementing a successful enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.”
• Good: “Generate a list of healthy breakfast options for diabetics.”
• Bad: “What’s new in B2B marketing?”
• Bad: “I need info on systems for business task management.”
• Bad: “What should diabetics eat for breakfast?”

Specify the outcome length

Indicating the desired output length helps the AI understand how much information to provide. If you need a brief overview, ask for a summary or list. For a comprehensive explanation, request a detailed response in several paragraphs.

• Good: “Give me a summary of what NPS (net promoter score) is in two sentences.”
• Good: “Provide a concise overview of the most popular CRM platforms used in the medical industry. Generate three paragraphs of up to 60 words each.”
• Good: “Generate a checklist for evaluating the effectiveness of a B2B enterprise sales strategy in less than six bullet points.”
• Bad: “Write a detailed explanation of B2B enterprise sales strategy in exactly 500 characters.”

Exercise: Identify good and bad AI prompts