How to Craft the Perfect ChatGPT Prompt

Imagine holding the entirety of the world’s knowledge in your brain yet knowing absolutely nothing about how to use it. What would that even be like?

Well, it’d be a lot like the homepage of ChatGPT. That’s the essence of generative AI tools—they contain every piece of information imaginable but no ability to apply it without human input.?

Because of its expansive inventory of data, however, expectations for what ChatGPT can do are understandably high. That’s why I often hear complaints after someone has used it: “The responses are so generic.” “It’s so obviously AI-generated.” “I had to spend an hour just to get it to deliver something usable.”

Like so many things in life, with ChatGPT, you only get out what you put in.?

If you want good outputs, you must provide good inputs.?

5 Essential Must-Dos When Writing a ChatGPT Prompt

There’s not just a science to writing good prompts. There’s an art to it, too. To help focus its vast knowledge, you need to provide context so that the AI-driven search engine can narrow its focus.

1. Give the AI an identity

Who do you want the AI to be? Tell ChatGPT who you are—or who you want it to be in its responses. You could say, “You are an executive with XYZ goals,” or “You’re a third-grade teacher with 30 kids in your classroom,” or, “You’re a social media manager for a consulting agency.” When you tell ChatGPT who it is, it will be able to look at the world through that lens.?

2. Add tone

Particularly if you are creating content, you’ll want to set the tone of the responses. Are you an expert? Are you a kind, empathetic teacher? Are you curious? Funny? ChatGPT, if given that context, will emulate it. It also helps to use this tone when writing your prompt, as it can then build it into the language. If you’re formal, be more formal in your responses. If you’re playful, be more playful in the responses.?

This also works for image-generating tools. Set the tone for what you seek with words like “cartoonish,” “mystical,” or “bright.”?

3. Add background text

Don’t forget: That giant chat box is just waiting to be filled! Don’t hold back on providing as much information as possible. If I’m asking ChatGPT to write an email, I’ll add examples of emails I’ve written. You can say, “We’ll be writing an article, so here are samples of recent articles I’ve written.” You can even upload your brand guidelines—just be careful not to share proprietary information. (I suggest adjusting the data privacy settings so it’s not being used to train the model.)?

4. Direct the length of the response

Do you want a 2,000-word report, a few paragraphs, or something super-short, like a Tweet-length response? Give it this direction.?

5. Ask the AI to ask you questions

One of my favorite tricks in crafting pitch-perfect prompts? Asking ChatGPT to ask you clarifying questions. “What else do you need to know from me to do what I’ve asked?”

Here’s an example of how I used these tactics when prompting ChatGPT to help me plan a vacation:

And here’s what ChatGPT provided:

As you can see, it gave me a list of additional criteria it would benefit from having in creating this itinerary.

Another example of a great prompt comes from Wharton professor Ethan Mollick, who has written a great deal on effective paths to prompting.?

For more structured requests, he believes each prompt should include:

• Roles and goals, which is similar to giving AI an identity
• Step-by-step instructions
• Pedagogy, or a specific point of view or process?
• Constraints
• Personalization?

Here’s how his prompt—for AI to coach a team on how to perform “premortems”—looked in practice:?

And here’s the output from ChatGPT:

How PromptPerfect Can Help Your Prompt-Writing Process

For those who have complained about the timesuck of prompting ChatGPT, there’s a solution! When I don’t have the energy to craft a perfectly structured prompt, I task the plugin “PromptPerfect” to do the heavy lifting. PromptPerfect is a tool designed to enhance your prompt's quality and precision by optimizing it for clarity, detail, and structure.

Here’s an example of a generic prompt and subsequent output:

And here’s what happens when the PromptPerfect plugin is applied:

Prompt Perfect was able to understand my basic prompt and create a prompt more in line with what Ethan Mollick and I recommend as best practices. The result, as you can see, was so much better.?

I recommend this plugin for anyone struggling with prompt-writing. By using it regularly, you can see in real-time the specific ways you could have improved upon your prompts and use those learnings the next time.

ChatGPT isn’t intuitive when adding plugins, so if you want more information on how to enable Prompt Perfect, I explain the step-by-step process in my latest LinkedIn livestream. Or read this helpful article from PC Magazine.?

Scaling Prompt-Writing Expertise Across Your Organization

Writing a good prompt is one thing. It’s another to scale that success so that an entire organization can reap the benefits. Often, leaders don’t think they can effectively use publicly available platforms like ChatGPT and resign themselves to building an expensive, customized engine on a private LLM.?

But with consistency and care, companies can make the most of ChatGPT. There are three critical takeaways that leaders should encourage their teams to put into practice:

1. Experiment endlessly. I will say it repeatedly: The only way you'll get better at writing these prompts is by practicing writing them. The more you do that, the more comfortable you’ll be experimenting with them, and the more these AI tools will positively impact the way you work thoughtfully and strategically.

2. Save your successes. I keep a Google Doc of all my effective prompts, broken down by whether I’m writing content, doing research, or trying to summarize something. I even have some saved based on identity or audience. This database is helpful as a reference, but I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve copy-pasted from it right into ChatGPT and been thankful for not having to reinvent the wheel with that task.?

3. Value your prompts. For organizations, good prompts are a valuable form of intellectual property—it’s the secret sauce to using generative AI effectively and making it a strategic asset. Think of it this way: The work you do across the organization is the context of the business, so training these engines to understand the context of your company and its strategic goals is essential and highly propriety.?

Your Turn

How do you go about creating great prompts? What’s your process and best practices?