How to Write AI Prompts for Content Creation
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Providing good AI prompts is like avoiding a horrible mess in the kitchen.
How? Have you ever asked a six-year-old how to make a pancake? More than likely, they’ll start by telling you what toppings to put on it. So, you need to backtrack a bit – take it step-by-step. Remember, when you say to add an egg, you mean they need to crack it open first, preferably over the bowl, and keep the shell out of the bowl. You’ll probably need to prompt them along the way, all the while wishing you’d given clearer instructions to begin with – which would have saved you so much time in the long run.
The AI tools used for content creation may not make a mess of your kitchen if you get your initial instructions wrong, but they do need careful prompting to achieve the desired result.
In this post, we’ll have a look at what is meant by AI prompting, what forms AI prompts can take, and how to write prompts that will help you use generative AI to save you time in your content creation.
What Is a Prompt in AI?
It’s right there in the title – and it’s a common enough word – but what do we mean by a prompt in AI terms? In generative AI, a prompt is a question or instruction you give to an AI tool to generate a response.
As you have likely seen, generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT or Gemini, can even produce a lengthy response to a simple prompt in double-quick time. To a time-poor freelance writer, this can seem like having a magic wand – enabling you to conjure up some keywords, inspiration, or an outline in less time than it takes to put the kettle on. Before you worry that your brain cells will be depleted and you’ll be out of a job, this form of AI will only save you time in the long run if you learn some new skills, as well as develop the ones you already have.
However chatty it might appear, an AI tool is still a computer program, and computers – much like some 6-year-olds in the kitchen – are notoriously literal. It follows that, to produce a result as close as possible to what you need, you should phrase your questions or instructions carefully. This skill is called prompt engineering, and it requires a mixture of clear direction and creative flair. Let’s take a closer look at what this key skill involves.
Types of AI Prompts
The types of prompts you can provide to a generative AI tool are as varied as the types of content you want to produce. To get you started, here are some of the main types of prompts, with examples and ideas on how you can use them.
Comparison
The clue’s in the title: This type of prompt is useful for crafting posts that compare two or more ideas, products, etc., in order to highlight differences or similarities.
Compare the personality and relationships of Ross and Joey in Friends.
List
The desired outcome of this type of prompt is the production of a list of items or attributes. A slight variation on this is to request a listicle. This is particularly useful for structuring information to make it easy to follow in a blog post or newsletter.
Create a listicle featuring the top 10 most memorable catchphrases from Friends.
Q&A
At its simplest, you could use AI to answer a question, although you would have to make sure to fact-check the answers.
When did the TV series Friends first air in the UK?
Perhaps you have been commissioned to write an article based on questions to the public, but you’re stuck on an inspiration about what to ask. Or maybe you want to be a little more creative and produce a fictional interview for your blog. A Q&A-style prompt could come to your rescue with some ideas in either case.
Suggest some questions for a survey about Friends.
Imagine a Q&A interview with the fictional characters of Friends, exploring their favorite memories from the series.
Opinion
It’s important to remember here that you’re not asking the AI model for its opinion. You could ask, but it will soon tell you that it doesn’t have its own opinion. Therefore, this type of prompt is useful if you’re writing a piece that requires different viewpoints for balance.
Present some opinions on the most underrated characters in Friends and argue why they deserve more recognition.
Summary
Using this type of prompt is handy if you need to condense a large amount of information, perhaps for your blog post conclusion.
Summarize the importance of Central Perk in the TV series Friends.
How to Write a Prompt for AI
We’ve had a look at some of the main types of AI prompts and what those can do, but how do you go about making them work for you?
Using any of the prompts above would certainly provide some interesting information – and probably a lot more than you bargained for. But, it’s unlikely the AI tool you used would know that you were actually looking to produce content for a new nineties-themed coffee shop.
Despite how much it might feel like some algorithms know everything about you, you really do need to spell out what you want to get from your prompts to your AI tool.
If you’ve taken work as a writer, you’ll likely have been provided with a brief for the piece you’ve been asked to write. To write an effective prompt for AI, you need to think of the information you would require as a writer, and then provide that to the AI tool.
Here’s some tips:
1. Be Clear
Imagine if you were given this instruction as a writer:
Write about Friends.
Where would you start? Most likely, you’d get right back to the client with a polite version of, “Write what?”
An AI tool won’t ask that, but it’ll likely produce reams of text, most of which won’t be what you were looking for.
Here’s where you can use some of the types of prompts we looked at earlier to make it clear what you want the AI tool to write.
Write a list of the top 10 quotations from Friends about coffee or coffee shops.
2. Be Specific
If you were being asked to write something, you’d want a bit more direction, right? How many words do you want? Who’s the intended audience? What tone of voice do you want? What’s the format? What details would you like to highlight?
All the information you would want as a writer needs to be fed to the AI tool in the prompt if it’s going to provide a helpful response.
Generate an engaging introduction of no more than 200 words for a blog post announcing the opening of a nineties-themed coffee shop. Highlight the ambience, décor, and menu. Please use a friendly, enthusiastic tone.
3. Provide Context
Context is key to understanding any task to provide anything close to the desired outcome. You can avoid a lot of wasted time and effort by including context in your prompt.
I’m producing content for the launch of a new nineties-themed coffee shop, like Central Perk in the TV show Friends.
4. Provide Structure
Just as an outline will help you as a writer by providing a clear structure, so will it help the AI tool stay on track with its response. You could even ask the AI tool to help produce the outline and then feed that back in as a prompt.
Create a blog post of 500–750 words to advertise the launch of a new nineties-themed coffee shop, like Central Perk in the TV show Friends. Please follow this outline:
1. Introduction: setting the scene with quotations from the show
2. Transporting You to the Nineties: describing the décor, ambience, and music
3. Central Perk Inspiration: share the influence of the iconic fictional coffee shop on the concept, referring to its importance as a character in its own right
4. Sneak Peek into the Menu
5. Closing and Call to Action: including the opening date and offers
5. Follow Up
It’s unlikely that you’ll get the response you want straightaway. With some well-chosen follow-up prompts, you can refine the response to resemble more closely what you need.
Perhaps you may have forgotten some important details:
I will paste below a copy of the menu and the poster advertising the opening day and special offers. Please include details from each.
Or maybe the response you received inspired you to develop a theme you hadn’t previously thought of:
I’m interested in the character of Gunther. Please provide some quotes by and about him from the show.
AI Prompting For Writers And Editors
You should now have a better idea of how to prompt an AI tool to help you write some winning content. Getting a six-year-old to take you through the whole pancake-making process might take a little longer, though.
In summary, to write an effective prompt, you need to think like a writer. Consider the information you would need from a brief, and include that in your prompt.
To further develop this skill, why not take our AI Prompting For Writers And Editors course? We’ve designed the course to help writers and editors like you master the art of prompt engineering and use generative AI to speed up your workflow. We’ve even included an AI prompt library, which includes over 130 prompts covering every stage of the content creation process.
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