4 Tips To Help You Master the Art of AI Prompting

When it comes to harnessing the power of AI writing and agent tools, the key lies in effective prompting. AI prompting refers to the way in which you communicate your instructions and requirements to a tool or app. The quality and relevance of the generated content heavily depend on how well you formulate your prompts. Just as clear and detailed directions are essential for reaching a desired destination, providing AI with specific, context-rich prompts is how you'll get the most out of it.

What’s the key to unlocking the full potential of AI writing and agent tools? Simple: it's not just about what you ask but how you ask it. Results from AI are generally only as good as how you prompt it. The way you lay your prompt—the words you choose, the clarity of your instructions, the details you provide—can make all the difference between a good result and a spectacular one.

If you want to avoid the annoyance of prompting perfectly, you should try using a specialized AI tool that does many of the complex prompting in the background, like one of HyperWrite’s AI Tools. With these, you can reduce the burden of trying to prompt something perfectly for a specific category or topic you’re trying to get a response about.

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Some cool ones include:

🦄Magic Editor: This tool can edit a document or message to improve its clarity, tone, and style, making it a powerful asset for refining written content.

🎤AI Speech Writer: Generate speeches using an outline or description, topic, and sources or quotes, which can be a great help for public speaking or presentations.

📚 Pokemon Fanfiction Generator: This unique tool can generate Pokemon fanfiction based on a summary, plot, and characters, offering a fun and creative outlet for fans of the franchise.

🎭Write Like Shakespeare: Generate text in the style of the Bard himself, which can be both educational and entertaining for literature enthusiasts.

🍽️Sous-Chef: Find meal ideas and recipes based on cuisine and dietary restrictions or special requests, making it a handy tool for cooking and meal planning.

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Here are a few tips on how to prompt correctly, whether you’re just trying to generate a few paragraphs or set up your own agent.

Craft Clear and Concise Prompts

A clear prompt is direct and leaves little room for confusion, while a concise prompt takes it a step further by cutting out the fluff. Avoid beating around the bush, as long-winded explanations can throw AI for a loop. Instead, keep your prompts short and sweet but still include as MUCH detail as possible

Now, let's put this into practice with an example. For example, this might be a prompt you’ll type into our Blog Post Generator if you want to determine the steps to making homemade pizza:

No-go Prompt: "I was wondering if you could possibly do me a favor and write something, maybe like an article or a blog post, I guess, about how to make the best homemade pizza, because I think people might like to know that, don't you?"

It's chatty and vague. The AI might write a novel instead of a blog post or give you the history of pizza when all you wanted was a simple recipe!

Revamped Prompt: "Write a 300-word blog post with easy steps for making homemade pizza. The target audience is moms who are looking to make an artisanal meal"

Notice you have all the important details rolled into one neat package: your word count, your format, your topic, and the details. The AI now knows exactly what you're asking for and can deliver the goods without any guesswork.

Just check how concise this is. You even get links to other articles and references you can use in your own writing. It combines prompt engineering skills with the tools' pre-set template. Do twice as much with the same prompt.

Be Specific and Precise

When you're chatting with an AI tool, vagueness is your number one enemy. AI writing tools need you to be as specific and precise as possible. Otherwise, you might end up generating content that doesn’t exactly match your expectations. Details matter so much.

Here's a prompt that's too vague. Imagine you're using our Personal Assistant Tool to draft emails for you:

No-go Prompt: "Could you write an email for that thing we talked about last week?"

This prompt is about as clear as mud. What thing? When was last week? And who's the email for? The AI won't have a clue.

Revamped Prompt: "Draft an email to Alex Smith summarizing our project update from the meeting on March 30, focusing on the new timeline and budget."

Now we're talking! You've told the AI who the email is for, the topic, the specific meeting date, and even the key points to include. This is incredibly precise. Now, you've built yourself an agent—a step further than just writing.

Provide as Much Background and Context as Possible

Any of these tools will need the full story of your request, or at least enough context about it, to really nail what you're asking for.  So every time you approach your AI with a task, always think about questions like: What's the goal? Who's the audience? What are the key details?

Let's say you need help writing an article, and you’re using HyperWrite’s Expert Writing Assistant Tool to streamline your workflow. 

No-go Prompt: "Write about tech trends." 

Telling your AI this is like saying, "Make a movie" to a director without giving them the genre or plot. It's too wide open. It’ll be entertaining a few times, but if you actually want to get things done, give as much insight as you can.

Revamped Prompt: "Write a 1,000-word article on the top five tech trends shaping remote work in 2024, geared towards small business owners looking to stay ahead." 

This is much better than the first prompt. You've given the AI the what (tech trends), the why (shaping remote work), the who (small business owners), and even the how long (1,000 words). Now, the AI has context and can really tailor the article to fit your needs. If you find the tool not listening to your word count, as it to continue writing or to go in-depth paragraph by paragraph.

Avoid Overloading the Prompt, Stay Focused

Your goal is to keep your AI prompt focused and balanced. Overloading your AI with an information-heavy prompt can produce gaps in your generated content when the AI tries to fulfill every single demand all at once. Keep it simple, and you'll get back exactly what you need.

Let's say you're looking for some travel tips using HyperWrite’s Ask AI Writer Tool. You might be tempted to ask the following:

No-go Prompt: "Can you write an article about travel tips for people who like to travel light, who are also on a budget, who might be interested in culture, history, adventure, and food, and who might be going to Europe, Asia, or South America? Can you also talk about myths of travelling and include quotes from famous people who’ve been to Europe, Asia, or South America, and can you do a deep-dive into safety and cultural etiquette as well?"

With this type of prompt, the AI might not know where to start. Instead, streamline your request: 

Revamped Prompt: "Write an article with five budget-friendly travel tips for backpackers interested in culture and adventure in South America. People aiming to go on a 14-day trip that do not have tons of money to spend on the trip."

This prompt sets clear boundaries and focuses on a couple of key areas, producing a more digestible and focused piece of writing overall. Again, ask the tool to go into more depth with each paragraph if you want more details

It’s All About Practice

When the AI train came in last year, it unlocked many new skill sets. One of these that trickled down was the need to prompt engineer as well as possible.

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AI is so powerful that it’s overwhelming to see how much it can do. You could ask tools for very little or provide it with complete pages of instructions. I wasn’t too great at prompting when I first started, because I kept holding myself back with what I would ask. I was like “there’s no way I can actually have it do this.”

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And then I kept trying, prompting, adjusting, and getting better. I find that giving context to these tools is the best thing you could do. Ideally, you should prompt a tool with a paragraph or more of context—who you are, numbers, anything that can help your writing stand out compared to a general output you might otherwise get.

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If you're looking to speed up your writing process and unlock the full potential of AI, HyperWrite's AI tools are the perfect solution. You can find specialized pre-prompted tools or create your own agent to help get things done faster.

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