Harness the Power of AI With Super Prompts
The advent of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models like GPT-3 has unlocked new possibilities for generating written content. While AI on its own can produce reasonably good text, the real magic happens when you provide additional guidance in the form of "super prompts."
Super prompts allow you to tap into the strengths of AI while also steering its output more precisely towards your goals. In this extended guide, we'll explore what super prompts are, why they work so well, and how you can use them to level up your own writing and content creation efforts.
What Are AI Super Prompts?
First, let's define what we mean by super prompts.
A super prompt is an extra long, highly detailed writing prompt. While a typical prompt may be just a sentence or two, super prompts can stretch to hundreds or even thousands of words.
They provide much more context and instructions to AI systems like GPT-3. This additional guidance gives the models a strong foundation to write from while reducing unwanted tangents or inaccuracies.
Some key features of quality super prompts include:
- Clear direction on the purpose, tone, style, and format you want the AI to follow
- Relevant background information to ground the AI on the topic
- Guidelines for what content to include or avoid
- Structural components like outlines or writing templates
- Definitions of key terms and concepts
- Mindset priming to orient the AI's perspective
- Examples of desired prose style and voice
- Custom opening and closing tags to mark prompt sections
- Periodic reminders of your key instructions
Why Do Super Prompts Work So Well?
There are several reasons why super prompts enable you to get much better results out of AI content generation:
More Control Over the Output
With super prompts, you have greater ability to steer the AI's writing in the direction you want it to go. The additional context reduces the chances of the model going off course or including irrelevant tangents.
Higher Quality Content
The extra background information primes the AI to write more nuanced, comprehensive content. It can pull from multiple reference points instead of just generating text from a narrow starting point.
Greater Efficiency
Constructing super prompts requires an upfront time investment. But they allow the AI to do more of the heavy lifting in the raw content creation phase, ultimately saving you time.
Customization for Specific Use Cases
Super prompts provide the flexibility to craft AI guidance tailored to your particular project or use case. The possibilities are nearly endless.
Taking Advantage of AI Capabilities
With super prompts, you can take full advantage of the remarkable text generation capabilities modern AI now possesses. The models have come a long way, but they still perform best with sufficient human prompting.
Constructing Effective Super Prompts
Creating excellent super prompts is part art, part science. It requires experimentation and refinement to discover what works best. Here are some proven tips:
Provide Clear Instructions
Be explicit upfront on what you want the AI to generate. Define the purpose, ideal length, formatting, perspective, writing style and any other requirements in concrete terms.
Give Relevant Background
Seed the AI with information integral to the prompt subject matter. For fiction, provide character profiles, setting descriptions and plot points. For articles, supply facts, quotes, examples and primary sources.
Set Content Guidelines
Instruct the AI on what types of topics, themes, angles and details to focus on and what to avoid. You define the guardrails. For a balanced perspective, give pros and cons.
Include Structural Direction
Provide an outline, template or other structural components you want the content to follow. This could be heading hierarchies, numbered lists or a story arc.
Define Key Terminology
Explain upfront how you want key terms and concepts to be represented. This syncs the AI's "understanding" with your own from the start.
Prime the Mindset
Set the tone and perspective you want the AI to adopt. This mindset framing influences stylistic factors like humor, optimism, satire, urgency, empathy and more.
Give Stylistic Examples
Provide excerpts demonstrating the types of prose, diction, metaphors, imagery, idioms, analogies and dialogue you want incorporated. This dials in the voice.
Use Opening and Closing Tags
Visually separate prompt components with consistent opening and closing tags. For example, you can place character descriptions within <Character> tags.
Repeat Key Instructions
Periodically reiterate your core direction, especially if the prompt is very long. Repetition drives points home for maximum impact.
Real-World Super Prompt Examples
To see super prompts in action, let's look at a few real-world examples:
Fantasy Fiction Chapters
Novelist Nick Stephen uses highly detailed super prompts to generate AI drafts of fantasy fiction chapters. His prompts include character profiles, plot points, prose samples and reminders to strictly adhere to his provided outline.
SEO Blog Posts
SEO writer Glen Long leverages super prompts to create initial drafts of keyword-rich blog posts. His prompts feed the AI competitor content, target keywords, structural templates, and guidelines to avoid thin or fluffy content.
Video Marketing Scripts
To automate creation of marketing video scripts, Josh Fechter optimized super prompts with messaging frameworks, product benefits, customer testimonials, and samples of his brand’s upbeat style.
Cold Email Outreach
Entrepreneur Kathryn Morgan crafted super prompts to produce first drafts of personalized cold email sequences. Her prompts include ideal customer profiles, email objectives, product details, and example email templates.
As these examples illustrate, super prompts can be customized to many different writing projects. The key is specifying the components that will yield the output you want.
Crafting Your Own Super Prompts
If you want to start using AI super prompts for your own content needs, here is a six-step process:
1. Identify your ideal finished product. Get very clear on the exact type of content you want the AI to produce.
2. Find relevant super prompt templates to model. Look at examples within your genre or niche to use as a starting structure.
3. Customize the template for your specific goals. Personalize the prompt with details tailored to your intended output.
4. Refine through iterative testing. Test prompt variations and tweak based on the results.
5. Analyze AI outputs closely. Review closely to identify areas for improvement in future prompt iterations.
6. Continuously optimize prompts. Even after initial success, continue editing your prompts to improve results over time as you gain experience.
When crafted strategically, super prompts enable you to leverage the strengths of AI for your unique writing needs. The technology still requires human guidance, but super prompts let you maximize the benefits. With the right approach, you can generate high-quality written content with incredible efficiency. The possibilities are endless!
