How to create the perfect content prompt for ChatGPT: A guide for digital marketers

14th June 2023

ChatGPT is a powerful tool – and like all powerful tools, if you don’t use it right, it can end in disaster. This is why knowing how to develop the perfect content prompt is key.

In this article, we’ll explore the key aspects to consider when crafting prompts, how to refine them effectively, and what to do with the output to enhance your digital and content marketing efforts.

What is a prompt and why does it matter

Prompts tell AI tools what you want them to do. The better and more detailed the prompt, the more likely you’ll get the results you need.

Imagine that ChatGPT is a freelancer. You wouldn’t just give them a blog topic and expect them to create something that’s perfect for you or your client. Generative AI work in much the same way – the better the brief, the better the final content.

ChatGPT responds to input and attempts to generate relevant and coherent content from these prompts. The prompt serves as a guiding question or instruction, influencing the nature of the generated response.

By structuring prompts strategically, digital marketers can leverage ChatGPT’s capabilities to improve customer interactions, generate creative content ideas, and enhance overall engagement. And while you might use prompts to structure or create the basics of a piece of content, we’d always recommend any content produced by AI should be fact checked, re-written for your audience and checked to make sure it’s highly original and relevant content.

Key aspects of an effective prompt

While the specifics are key, there are a few guiding principles that can help you create perfect prompts every time:

Ensure clarity: Make sure your prompt is concise and easy to understand. Clearly communicate the purpose and context of the conversation to guide ChatGPT effectively.
Make it relevant: Your prompt should be highly relevant to your target audience and the topic you want to discuss. Align the content prompt with your marketing goals to produce meaningful responses.
Consider tone and brand voice: Tailor your prompt to reflect your brand’s voice and personality. Consider the tone, style, and language that best resonates with your audience.

Refining and iterating prompts

Not every prompt works the first time round. Thankfully, ChatGPT learns. So, the more you teach it, the better it gets. When you’ve got the perfect prompt, add it to your prompt library. A prompt library is simply that – a collection of prompts that work, but can be refined for specific tasks. Sort them by client, content type, output.

To help create perfect prompts, consider:

Experimentation: Craft multiple versions of a prompt and test them to see which give you the best results. Tweak the wording, structure or context to find the best combination.
Specificity: Fine-tune your prompts to be more specific and focused. This helps ChatGPT provide more accurate and relevant responses. Avoid open-ended or vague prompts that may result in ambiguous or off-topic outputs.
Iterative feedback: Continuously review the generated responses and analyse their quality. Take note of any inconsistencies or areas for improvement, and use this feedback to refine your prompts further.
Quality assessment: Evaluate the responses generated by ChatGPT based on relevance, coherence, and alignment with your marketing objectives. Use this evaluation to filter and select the most valuable outputs.

How to improve the content created in response to a prompt

To make the most of your content prompts and improve the content created in response to a prompt, it’s vital to provide specific inputs that guide the AI model accurately. At Edge45, when we create content for clients using our AI Generation Service, we add the following to our prompts:

Task: Clearly define the purpose or objective of the conversation. Is it to produce a whitepaper, provide collection page information, or write a blog?
Client: If applicable, provide information about the client or brand you’re representing. This helps ChatGPT align its responses with the client’s values, mission, or unique selling points. We use plugins to live sites, to help the AI tools view live websites.
Tone of Voice: Specify the desired tone, such as formal, casual, professional, friendly, or authoritative. This ensures the generated responses reflect the intended brand voice. It’s also worth speaking with the client over any specifics they can or can’t say.
Length: Indicate the length of the blog based on your own research or competitor review. See what’s ranking well for the topic and how long they are.
Audience: Describe your target audience to ChatGPT, including their demographics, interests, or pain points.
Keywords: Incorporate relevant keywords or key phrases into your prompt. Again, be specific – do you want a certain keyword added to the header, less relevant ones used naturally throughout the copy?
SEO Best Practice: As an SEO agency, we know what makes a piece of content rank thanks to years of experience producing such content. We can add these features into a prompt.
Referencing: If there are specific sources or references you want ChatGPT to consider, mention them in the prompt.
Industry/Sector: Specify the industry or sector your content prompt relates to.
Other requirements: If there are any particular requirements or guidelines for the generated responses, such as addressing specific pain points, incorporating certain features, or adhering to legal or ethical considerations, mention them in the prompt.
Headings, Title, Meta Data: If you need ChatGPT to assist with creating headings, titles, or meta descriptions for your content, include instructions for these elements in the prompt.
Bullets: If you require a list or bullet points in the response, indicate this in the prompt.
Summary/Conclusion: If you need a summary or conclusion as part of the response, specify it in the prompt. This helps ChatGPT provide a coherent and concise wrap-up to the generated content.

When we get the content back, we then go to work on it. Our team of expert copywriters and the content marketing team will build on the basic content provided by the AI tool. This involves everything from improving the tone of voice to match the client’s desired tone, adding links to client’s key pages, restructuring it, and adding more relevant product and service related content.

Conclusion

In addition to considering the broader aspects of content prompt creation, incorporating specific inputs enables ChatGPT to produce more tailored and accurate responses. A prompt should be developed by someone who both knows the client inside and out, and has the skills and experience of a content marketing expert so they know what a good piece of content looks like.

At Edge45, we can do both. We know everything about our client – from their tone of voice to their latest product range. And we have a team of content experts who know how to produce content that not only hits your needs but also will rank on Google.