Transcript:
I am having so much fun with ChatGPT.
For me, as someone that’s interested in artificial intelligence, technology, software efficiency, productivity, it’s just become a staple in my day to day working life. And you know how sometimes you just have to remind people to Google things, so they’ll ask you a question and you’ll say, have you Googled it? It’s a pretty simple starting point, but quite often I’m finding my response to be, have you tried using ChatGPT for that?
I’m finding it surprising when people are saying that they’re not using ChatGPT yet or haven’t even tried it. And that’s a little bit of my ego at play, because I find ChatGPT natural, because of my interests, because of my skill sets. I’m finding it maybe shocking or surprising when I’m hearing people say they’ve not used ChatGPT or alternatives, or they don’t really know how to use it yet.
And so, in this episode, I want to share five ChatGPT prompting tips that anyone can start applying today.
So, for those that are feeling overwhelmed or perhaps just haven’t had the time or haven’t gotten to grips with ChatGPT yet, I’m hoping this episode will introduce you to tips and an overall framework that really helps you understand what ChatGPT is capable of, or at least a basic introduction to that. And even if you are familiar with ChatGPT, I think there are tips here and an overall framework that you can apply that will improve your prompts and your overall output from ChatGPT.
So, let’s get into it. Act as or behave as prompting. So, when you next enter a prompt into ChatGPT, I want you to start the prompt with an instruction to ChatGPT to act as the profession that you want it to act as. So, for example, “ChatGPT I want you to act as a journalist, I want you to act as a marketing strategist, I want you to act as a marketing podcaster.” Specifying ChatGPT to act as something will change the way in which it curates and writes and returns information. The way that I see it is that you’re instructing ChatGPT to get into the mindset of x, whatever you want. Next, I want you to specify who you’re asking ChatGPT to produce a response for. So who is the audience? Again, we can break this down by profession, by industry, by size of business. You can even do it by criteria such as reading comprehension, the complexity of information.
So, do you want it to write for someone that’s an expert or a beginner or even for the medium? So think about where this response is going. Do you want it to write a response that’s suitable for a report? Do you want it to write a response that’s suitable for a website? Combine these elements when you’re thinking about instructing ChatGPT on who it’s producing responses for, specify the audience and specify the medium. So combining this with my first tip, we may now have a prompt, something along the lines of “ChatGPT, please act as a podcaster and write me a podcast script tailored towards marketing managers in the health and wellness industry in the UK”.
Next, I want you to specify the format that you want information returned in within your prompt. So, you might ask ChatGPT to return the information in a listicle format, or in a table or in bullet points. And though it’s a bit advanced for this episode, using ChatGPT Plus you can also get add ins that help you return information in charts and graphs. So, bringing together the tips so far, we may now have a prompt along the lines of “ChatGPT please act as a marketing podcaster and produce me a podcast script that’s tailored for marketing managers in the health and wellness sector in the UK and produce this in a listicle format”.
Next, I want you to specify the restrictions that chat GBT has to work under so the limitations of what you want it to produce. Quite often for me, that might be word count in podcasting, that might be time limits, it could be producing information within a specific date range, but be specific in the restrictions that you apply to ChatGPT’s response.
So again, bringing this together as an example, we might now have a prompt that reads ChatGPT please act as a marketing podcaster and produce a podcast script for marketing managers in the health and wellness sector in the UK in a listicle format. So now we apply the restrictions to our response by requesting please ensure there are no more than five tips and that the episode is no longer than ten minutes. And this isn’t a tip, more a reminder that of course you have to add your topic into the prompt. So just as an example, I’m going to use the topic of ChatGPT prompting. So, taking all of the tips so far, we might have a prompt that now reads “please act as a marketing podcaster and produce me a podcast script that’s tailored towards marketing managers in the health and wellness sector in the UK. Please produce the script in a listicle format with no more than five tips and an episode length of no more than ten minutes.” And you don’t have to then add the topic at the end, you can integrate the topic within your prompt, but just in this example I might now say “and please produce the script on the topic of ChatGPT prompting tips that can be easily applied by beginners.”
At this point, if you apply the tips so far in this episode to your prompting, I am certain that you will get better responses and start to get more comfortable and see the vastness and the opportunity of ChatGPT.
But there’s one final tip that I want to share. Once you’ve received your initial response, I want you to refine that response by asking ChatGPT, “is there anything I have missed in my initial prompt that could have made this response even better?”
So just by asking ChatGPT what have I missed? ChatGPT can then review your initial prompt and all of the context that you’ve given it about the industry, the format, the topic, and specify to you what you should consider adding to the prompt and subsequently adding to the entire thing that you’re producing. So, I love using this prompting technique as a way to get constructive feedback, perhaps make me alert to things that I’ve missed, things I can improve, things that I can do in the future. You don’t necessarily have to do it this way and do it at the end. That’s just the way that I prefer to do it. But it’s a good way. As you start to get comfortable with ChatGPT, it’s a good place to start.
So, while I’ve specified ChatGPT in this episode, these prompting tips and this overall framework can be applied to information that you’re requesting from Bard or Claude.
In summary, to improve your experience and your responses from ChatGPT and other tools, be specific about the information you’re requesting, add plenty of context and always refine your prompts and request the tools refine their responses.
I hope the tips shared in today’s episode improve your prompting techniques, make you more comfortable, more confident in what you’re requesting of ChatGPT and other tools. If you have any questions related to ChatGPT you like the episode and want me to produce more content like this, please just connect with me on LinkedIn. Let me know, or you can contact us, grow@sitevisibility.com or tweet us at sitevisibility. This has been the Internet Marketing Podcast.
Take care, Scott