How to get better answers from AI with effective prompts

What is a good AI prompt?

A prompt is simply an instruction to the AI, where you describe what you want help with. But how well-worded your prompt is can play a crucial role in the results you get from your AI-generated content. So how do you master the art of prompting effectively? We’ve put together a useful checklist of our top tips for creating effective prompts, which you’ll find further down in this blog article. But to better understand the difference a good prompt can make, let’s start with a couple of examples:

Example 1: The simple prompt

Anna works as a salesperson and needs to create a compelling sales pitch for a new product that her company has just launched. Anna will use the sales pitch in an email to her existing customer contacts. She chooses to use ChatGPT to create her sales pitch, and starts by testing a simple prompt:

“Write a sales pitch to my customer contacts where I present our new effective product, in an informative email.”

The result:

English translation: 
"We have launched a new product that can help improve your working processes. It is designed to increase efficiency. Contact us for more information."

Anna finds the AI-generated text informative, but somewhat short and can be perceived as impersonal. In addition, there is a lack of a clear call to action or other relevant information about how her customers should proceed if they want to know more about the product. After all, she wants an effective sales pitch that attracts curiosity. Therefore, Anna writes about her prompt in a more detailed way:

Example 2: The detailed prompt

"Write a sales pitch of max 100 words for our new product that I can send to my customer contacts in an email. Highlight that the tool is easy to implement without a technical background, that it helps small and medium-sized businesses streamline their processes, and that my customers can achieve benefits such as cost and time savings. Use a formal but light-hearted tone, and encourage customers to book a free consultation with me to learn more."

The result:

English translation: 
"Hi [customer name],

I hope you are doing well! I am writing to tell you that we have launched a new product that is both easy to use and quick to implement, even without technical background. The tool is designed to help both small and medium sized companies to increase efficiency within their processes while saving time and money. I think this could be a great for your business! Let me know if you want a free consultation in which we can take a closer look at your needs. Looking forward to hear from you!

Best regards, Anna"

As you can see, Anna gets two completely different results depending on how she chooses to design her prompt. The more detailed prompt produced a result that was not only more engaging, but also concrete and actionable.

So what are the important things to consider in order to write effective prompts that generate the results you are looking for? Read on below to learn our top tips!

Checklist for creating better prompts

Be clear about the goal

A good prompt always starts with knowing exactly what you want the result to be, whether it’s a short text or a detailed analysis. Think of AI as your assistant – the more you describe, the better the answer you’ll get. Do you want to create a simple headline, a long article, a short email or a product description of max 300 words? If you want the AI ​​tool to create content for a specific format, you should mention it in your prompt and be clear about what you want the result to be. The more precise you are in your description, the easier it is for the AI ​​to generate the result you’re looking for.

Be detailed and specific

The more detailed you are in your prompt, the better the result will be. Therefore, also specify the context and purpose of the generated text. This gives the AI ​​a clearer framework to work within. Avoid vague formulations in your detailed description and instead provide concrete examples. Also, avoid repeating yourself as this can confuse the AI.

Provide examples or guidance

If you have a specific style in mind, you can also provide an example or description of what you want the result to look like, to guide the AI ​​tool in the right direction. For example, this could involve using a formal, informal, humorous or objective tone in your text. You can also try assigning the AI ​​tool a specific professional role, to influence the style and content of the generated response.

Experiment and adjust

Don't be afraid to experiment with different wording or word choices, and adjust your prompts based on the responses you get, to see if it affects the answers you get, to see if it affects the answers. Sometimes small changes can make a big difference in the result.

Specify what you want to exclude

If the result still doesn't turn out exactly as you had in mind, you can try describing what you don't want to include in your prompt. For example, this could involve avoiding using specific terms, or a certain topic.

Avoid leading questions

Leading questions can affect the response results. Therefore, it may be worth asking as objective questions as possible. A leading question could be, for example, “Why is AI better than human workers?” Instead, you could try asking: “What are the advantages and disadvantages of AI, compared to human workers?” By keeping your questions objective, you will also get a more neutral and informative response.

Test different chatbots

It may also be worth not getting stuck on a specific AI tool. Different AI chatbots may be better at different types of information and tasks depending on how they are trained and their specific functions. So dare to test different chatbots to investigate which tool suits the purpose best or try using them in combination with each other.

Get help from AI to prompt better

If you need further help with your prompts, you can ask AI for help with this as well. For example, you can start writing a suggestion for a prompt, and then ask your AI tool to review and suggest improvements. If you want to take it a step further, you use another chatbot to review the first chatbot's suggestions.

Prompt for images

When you prompt for image generation, there are additional things you should consider. Here it is important to describe the following in your prompt, so that your result is as good as possible: Who or what should be in focus? Does this person represent any specific action? What should be in the background? How should it look in terms of light, camera angle and colors? What style are you looking for? Test yourself to see which type of prompt suits your images best!

Watch out for AI hallucinations

Have you noticed that AI has the ability to make up facts? Language models have no idea what is right and wrong. This means that an AI can both misunderstand information and generate pure factual errors. To effectively avoid possible AI hallucinations, it is important to be critical of the source and check the factual information coming from an AI. If you notice that the AI ​​is starting to deviate from the truth, try breaking your question down into smaller parts and verify each answer separately.

Read more about how to best avoid AI hallucinations here!

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