.jpg)
The results you get
from AI powered tools like ChatGPT will
only be as good as the prompts you give them. A vague or general prompt will
get you vague, general results. Here are three essentials for writing a good
prompt.
1: Be specific.
Detail precisely what you
are looking for.
- General: What are best practices for CRM?
- Precise: What are best practices for
using CRM with account based marketing?
Explain the context of the
question: Do you need talking points? Blog ideas? If so, include that in the
prompt.
2: Be brief.
- Using fewer words forces you to pinpoint
what it is you want. Before you enter your prompt, read it and ask
yourself, “Is this word really necessary?” Eliminating unnecessary words
makes it more likely ChatGPT will give you precisely what you are looking
for.
- One of the great things about ChatGPT is
that it understands normal language. One of the things it understands is
what parts to ignore. When I entered “What are best practices for using
CRM with account based marketing” into Bing, it ignored the words “what
are.” While you can use everyday language, knowing what it uses gets you
thinking about what ChatGPT responds to.
- For a complex request, use several simple
sentences instead of one complex sentence with several clauses or
subpoints.
- Do not say please or thank you. While
this may seem odd, several experts I spoke with say it happens quite often
and can confuse the program.
- SEE WHAT'S IN STORE FOR YOU
3: Be
clear.
- Use words that are easy to understand.
Keep a thesaurus handy. Not only can it
help you find a simpler word, it can also suggest subtly different words
you may want to try in a prompt.
- Avoid jargon and slang. Smart content.
Top-of-the-funnel. Lead flows. While you and I know what those are,
ChatGPT may not. Or each one may have several different meanings depending
on the context.
- Watch out for acronyms. Top-of-the-funnel
is frequently written as TOFU. I’m sure you can see where that could be
confusing.
In my example I used the
acronym CRM and spelled out account-based marketing. That’s because there are
very few other uses of CRM besides customer relationship management. However,
ABM has many very common uses (Anti-Ballistic Missile, Agent-Based Modeling,
Activity-Based Management, etc.). I suspect ChatGPT would get the right one
given the context of CRM but I wanted to be sure.
If at first you don’t
succeed
Also, one final tip: If you’re not happy with the results you got,
hit the “retry” button. This tells ChatGPT to generate something different than
the first results it gave you.