Building Better Prompts

How to Get the Answers You Want

100 Prompts You Need to Know About To 10x Your Business!

If you have been on LinkedIn, Instagram, or any other social media platforms for that matter, in the past few years you have probably seen a lot of headlines like that. I know I have. Since I started using AI regularly about a year and half ago, I have been inundated with this or that AI “tips and tricks” trend.

However, I can be blunt, I don’t feel like they’re super useful for four reasons:

1. They’re too long. Five or more pages of nothing but text can be difficult to digest in one go and is certainly too much for something like Instagram.

2. They hide the prompt inside the explanation of the prompt, making it difficult to read.

3. They’re not written in plain English and are so industry specific in some cases that you lose the reasoning behind the post.

And the most damning reason of? They don’t explain how to right better prompts in general. So, for the 29% of people who don't know how to use AI, I wanted to write a no-nonsense, simple explanation of how I’ve increased the effectiveness of my prompts over the past year.

Necessary Disclosures

I want to take one minute to saw a few things. First off, I can already here people saying, “what do you mean it’s not effective, my post has 300 likes!” That may be true, and if it is, that’s great!

Also, specificity is crucial for certain cases. When I use AI to double check my data analysis, I have to use specifics, so the LLM knows what I am talking about. However, I think it’s much more useful to focus on the broad strokes for most cases.

Now, with those out of the way, here are the five things to focus on to improve your AI prompts.

Improving Your Prompts

For those who are brand new to the AI game, prompts are simply questions or commands that you ask to AI to answer or do. With the vast majority of prompts, you are going to speak to the AI in the same way you want to talk to a person (except for one case that we’ll talk about at the end). Just like you would with a person, when talking to AI, you want to focus on clarity and conciseness, also you want to focus on just one question, with background context, and when you are asking something specific, add format as needed!

Clarity, Clarity, Clarity

When you are preparing a prompt, you want focus on be clear. Like I mentioned in my last article AI can get the answers wrong, and the probability of that gets compounded when the prompt isn’t clear.

This was the hardest lesson for me to learn (I feel like I am still learning it sometimes). However, it has the biggest impact of anything on this list. Something that works for me is to ask myself: “How would I explain this to a nine-year-old?”, if you feel like you can’t (again, with a few exceptions) you need to simplify the message. Another way to focus on clarity is actually the second thing to focus on, be concise.

Be Concise

More words don’t necessarily make the prompt better. In my experience, every time I add more words than I need I ended getting a less clear answer. If you want to get better answers, try to ask it in less words.

Example of a wordy versus concise prompt on climate change.

If you can say what you want to say in less words, not only will it make your prompt more concise, but it will also improve the clarity of your prompts as well. The next tip narrows it down ever further.

Ask One Question

If you really want to get the most out of your AI prompts, focus on just one question at a time. I found this out the hard way. For most of the AI prompts I have made, if I ask more than one question or request, the AI focuses on the first problem, and only sort of answers any other requests I give. If you are having this problem as well, my recommendation is to ask your key question, like:

What is the best way to budget for a family of four?

Then, if you need more clarification, ask to follow up questions or requests until you get exactly what you need. However, what if you can’t quite decide what your key question is, then the next tip might be what you need!

Background Context and Proper Formatting

Every so often, I don’t actually know what my vital prompt actually is. In that situation I find that providing some background context helps a lot. Here is one example that happened to me a few days ago:

“I need you to be YouTube assistant, using this script, write me an eye-catching title and description for my video about _________”

As you can see, asking “write me a YouTube description and title”, wouldn’t have given me the right answer since it was specific to the script I input. This also highlights the importance of proper formatting for certain prompts, like video scripting.

The basic idea is, if you can’t think of a specific prompt, then check your formatting and make sure you’ve provided enough background context.

The Future of Everyday AI

As we stand on the brink of an AI-driven future, mastering the art of effective prompting is not just a skill—it's a necessity. By embracing clarity, conciseness, and context in our interactions with AI, we're not just optimizing our queries; we're paving the way for a more intuitive and productive relationship with technology that will shape our world for years to come.