Hi, Scott Lovejoy and Brandon Goldberg here with another weekly tip for improving your life and your business with AI! Our focus for November is better prompting! This week, let’s talk about the components of a top performing ChatGPT prompt.

The best ChatGPT results come from well formed prompts, using all six elements of prompt construction!

Although it’s not strictly required to use all six elements, understanding what they do and their order of importance is essential for better ChatGPT results.

WHAT ARE THE SIX PARTS OF A GOOD CHATGPT PROMPT?

Breaking down the parts of a great ChatGPT prompt gives us: Task, Context, Examples, Persona, Format, and Tone. Not every one of this is mandatory for every prompt, but understanding what they do will help you improve your results.

The parts are listed here, roughly in order of importance, and here’s what they do:

• TASK: What is the primary result or answer you want ChatGPT to provide?

• CONTEXT: Who are you? What is your environment? Any relevant additional information to tailor the results.

• EXAMPLES: What do you want the result to look like? Are there any elements the answer must include?

• PERSONA: Is there a character or voice that should form the style or expertise of the result?

• FORMAT: What structure should the answer follow? For instance, do you want the results in a table?

• TONE: What mood should be set by the answer? Is this intended to be very polished and professional? Is it more casual and should include a sense of humor?

CHATGPT PROMPT SEGMENTS IN ACTION

Let’s say you’re interested in content marketing for your small business. You sit down in front of ChatGPT and plug in a vague prompt, such as, "Tell me about content marketing."

This is going to get you a very broad and unfocused result! Let’s work through each of the segments and see where we can add more punch to each.

Task: The main action of your prompt! In this case, it would benefit from more specificity. “Create a plan” or “Give me steps” would have more impact than simply “tell me about”.

Context: Here’s where you make it all about you or your situation! What kind of business are you? Is there a specific time of year or demographic this marketing to whom this marketing should have appeal? Whatever details you can offer will narrow the focus of the results you will get.

Examples: When you want to make sure the results include certain things or “look like this”, then tell ChatGPT so in the prompt! If you’ve seen a list of actions on some other topic that you like, include it in your prompt and tell ChatGPT to make the results conform to this format.

Persona: If there’s a particular point of view or voice of authority on a subject, tell ChatGPT to use that viewpoint as the voice of your result.

Format: Not so applicable in this specific case, but if we wanted to create a timeline for a content calendar, then maybe we’d want it in the form of a table with column headings that include due dates and type of content.

Tone: For our content marketing, we want it to be professional with a light sense of humor, so we will specify that in our prompt.

PUTTING ALL THE CHATGPT SEGMENTS TOGETHER

After thinking about all those parts, we’ll turn “Tell me about content marketing” into this far more developed prompt:

"Outline content marketing strategies suitable for a small e-commerce business looking to boost holiday sales, as if you were a seasoned marketing consultant. Give me actionable steps with examples for each step in a professional voice with a light sense of humor.”

ChatGPT can handle very long and complex prompts, so you can get as detailed and verbose as you’d like with it, but this is already a substantial improvement from the vague prompt we started with!

DON’T FORGET TO ASK CHATGPT WHAT YOU ARE MISSING

Always remember that a lot of the power in ChatGPT comes from its ability to carry on a human-like conversation. If the results aren’t coming out how you like, then ask questions!

• Am I missing anything important?

• How can I better prompt you for detailed results?

• Are there industry standards for the business I am in?

• Can you rewrite that, but more along these lines… ?

If an idle thought comes to mind, just ask! ChatGPT will always do its best to be helpful and provide guidance.

IS A LOGIN REQUIRED FOR CHATGPT?

Yes, you need a login to use ChatGPT.

WHAT IS THE COST FOR CHATGPT?

GPT3.5 is free to use.

However, if you want the upgraded abilities and features of GPT4, like image analysis, data analysis, and plugins, then it’s $20 a month.

We hope you enjoyed this TechWave newsletter, we’ll see you next week! In the meantime, let us know how you’ve used ChatGPT to elevate your AI workflow!

-Scott and Brandon