A well-crafted prompt is able to ingest any amount of explanation about a topic and turn it into something people will actually take the time to read.
Below is an example prompt we use to build AI assessments. The purple background is the whole prompt and the white highlight is what you customize.
This whole prompt works off of a definition of something that a customer defines. I kept it short to save you the time, but in the section where the customer defines tech addiction, they could go on for 1000’s of words if they wanted to, if that’s comfortable.
Or they could say very little.
Either way this prompt would transform what they said into a perfect quiz result based on what we know a perfect quiz result to be, every single time, without fail, instantly.
Now if you compare that to several years (literally) it might take a human to think about how to condense down their thoughts into a perfect quiz result, you can see the power in this prompt.
ChatGPT Prompt for turning your raw text into usable content
To craft a prompt like this one you need two things.
- Open-ended section to put in raw text. A section of the prompt where you can say as much or as little as you want about a topic.
- An output format you want the text to transform into. An exact output you want the text to be transformed into, complete with how to structure the output down to a word-level of granularity.
Once you do that you can take any information of any length and have it output in the same way every single time, like a machine turning raw metal into beautiful panels for a car.
I want to make a quiz titled: Quiz Title: How addicted to technology are you?
I want three outcomes that are different levels based on this definition of the highest level.
(This is the customers’ definition of the highest level of the assessment subject, if they don’t give you anything then try to pull from Wikipedia)
Basically, addiction to tech means whatever they are doing they consistently have to stop and check Their phone. At the cost of anything else. It’s become an ingrained habit
First print out the quiz title as:
Quiz Title: [Title}
Then create three outcomes in this format
Outcome 1 Title
Outcome 1 Image: [What kind of photo would represent this result and feature a person? Answer with a two word search term]
Outcome 1 description [75-100 words, starts off with “Your…” Then describe the outcome in a positive way, follow up with recommendations on how to improve positioned as starting from a good place and getting better]
ChatGPT Prompt for expanding notes into usable content
In some cases you have a few bullet points or jotted down notes and you want to turn those into something you can use. For this prompt you will use two parts.
- Expand on your notes
- Reformat the text into usable format
Let’s look at another example prompt we use in production.
In this prompt we are taking some bullet points about each of the quiz outcomes and expanding them into usable quiz outcomes that will speak to the quiz taker directly. As long as you give ChatGPT the ideal outcome format it can expand jotted down notes into fully formed outcomes.
Note: The granularity of the ideal outcome format can be as dialed in as you want. In my experience you can experiment with the following.
- Format (Length, lists, sentence structure, order, etc.)
- Tone (Fun, exciting, happy, upbeat, informational, academic, etc.)
- Perspective (First, Second, Third person)
- Content (Describe, expand on, provide examples, give context, explain, etc.)
- Recommend (Products, services, learning resources, etc.)
Within the ideal output format for ChatGPT you can direct it with any and all of the above to dial in exactly how the output looks. The list above are the ways I’ve found ChatGPT to understand dialing in output formats but you can experiment with finding more.
I want to make a quiz titled: Quiz Title: Which interior design style refresh does your home need?
With these outcomes.
(This is whatever information you have about your outcomes)
The types of refreshes:
Warm, cosy, earthy.
Clean, minimalistic, modern.
Traditional, classic, tailored.
Light, airy, natural.
Bright, bold, eclectic.
Can you first print out the quiz title as:
Quiz Title: [Title}
And then can you turn those outcomes into this format?
Outcome 1 Title: [Title]
Outcome 1 Image: [What kind of photo would represent this result and feature a person? Answer with a two word search term]
Outcome 1 description: [75-100 words, starts off with “Your…” Then the first sentence describes the outcome in second person. Second sentence frames that outcome in a positively reaffirming way. Third sentence tells quiz taker what they can do with their outcome]
ChatGPT Prompt to Start from Nothing and Create Usable Content
When you want to start from nothing and generate usable content that works too. It just takes a few extra steps.
Here’s what you do.
- Generate information about the topic
- Rework that information to focus on what you want to talk about
- Reformat the information into usable format
Let’s look at it. First we will generate raw information about our topic. We will start with what we know, highlighted in white, which is just what we do and what our end goal is. Then we run a prompt that specifically tells ChatGPT what information to gather.
Here’s what ChatGPT understands for information gathering.
- Descriptions – ask it to describe something
- Lists of facts/characteristics – ask it to list facts about a topic (will sometimes be incorrect FYI)
- Attributes – ask it to list the attributes of something
- Personality traits – ask it to describe a type of person
- Perspectives – ask it to provide a perspective on a topic
- Definitions – ask it to define a topic
So we start by asking it to generate information with some or all of those parameters.
I’m a wellness coach and I want to make a quiz titled “How stressed are you?” Could you outline three unique outcomes for the quiz at different levels?
In each outcome include a description of what type of person would get that outcome and also include five unique characteristics of the type of person who would receive that outcome.
Next we focus the information on what we want to talk about. In this case I want to focus on work-related stress rather than just general stress, so I will tell ChatGPT to rework the information provided and have it pertain just to work related stress.
You can do this as many times as you want until the information reflects what you want to see.
Here is a list of ways you can focus the content.
- Topics – tell ChatGPT to focus on particular sub-sets of information
- Time-frames – tell ChatGPT to focus on recent information
- Audience – tell ChatGPT to focus the information towards a certain audience type
- Voice -tell ChatGPT to speak in a certain voice I.E. Speak as a marketer
Those are the parameters I have tested but you can explore more on your own.
I want the outcomes to be more specific to work-related stress. Can you rewrite them to focus on work-related stress but don’t change the format.
Once the information is dialed in towards the audience you are trying to reach, you can reformat it into usable format. In this case I’m reformatting to quiz outcomes but you can reformat in any way. Here are some examples.
- Blog post format
- Social post format
- Memo
- Executive Summaries
- Quizzes
Whatever format you need the text output to be in, just specify the output format with hyper-detail.
Now reformat those outcomes in this format.
Outcome 1 Title
Outcome 1 Image: [What kind of generic photo would represent this result and feature a person? Answer with a two word search term]
Outcome 1 description [75-100 words, starts off with “Your…” Then describe the outcome in a positive way, follow up with recommendations on how to improve positioned as starting from a good place and getting better]
Learning ChatGPT is a process
Hopefully this post helps you on your learning journey. It’s a long process to develop the skill, I would recommend regular practice on practical applications just like how you’d learn anything new. The three prompts outlined above are great places to start because they’re pretty universal use-cases you could start implementing to your workflow and put into practice.