You can do a lot with AI — but it all starts with your input. When you’re writing an AI prompt, following a few basic guidelines can help you get the results you’re looking for. If you’re new to AI, check out this guide to learn more about AI prompting tips and how to use them to write better AI prompts.
What to consider when writing a prompt
When writing an AI prompt, there are four key areas to focus on: Persona, task, context, and format.
The persona refers to the information you provide about yourself when writing an AI prompt. You could write a simple prompt like “Write an email to [contact] welcoming them to the company,” but you can add more context with a persona in order to get a better response. Instead, try “I am an HR manager. Write an email to [contact] welcoming them to the company. Invite them to schedule a meeting with me on [date].”
The task refers to the actual task you’re telling AI to perform. You should be specific about your task instructions to get the best results. However, it’s also important to be clear and concise when assigning AI tasks. For example, your task could be “Write an email to [contact] to schedule a meeting on [day].” If you want to include anything specific in your email, you can add context once you’ve clearly stated your task.
Context is the best way to get targeted results from your AI prompts. Whether you’re using AI for content creation, automation, or refining your writing, providing context is a great way to tell AI how you want it to perform a task.
Let’s say you’re sending a welcome email to a new hire, and there are a few details you want to include. You could say:
“Write an email to [contact] to schedule a meeting on [day]. Ask them if they have any questions about their new role. Thank them for joining the team.”
Different formats work for different types of content. Emails should be short and sweet, but blog posts can be thousands of words long. When writing an AI prompt, tell AI what format you want the response to be in. For example, you could say:
“Write an email to [contact] to schedule a meeting on [day]. Use less than 200 words.”
You can also ask AI to provide your results in the form of a list, a table, or any other format you want.
Tips for effective prompting
Understanding how AI works can help you write effective prompts that generate better results. Let’s look at some tips to help you write better prompts.
Use natural language
Using natural language is one of the most critical parts of effective AI prompting. Think of it like having a conversation with AI. You should write your prompts in a way that mimics everyday speech. That way, AI tools can better understand what you’re asking for. The words you use and the way you phrase things can significantly impact the output you receive.
Try phrasing your prompts differently if you’re having trouble getting the results you want from AI tools, and you’ll learn what works and what doesn’t.
For example, if you want to generate ideas to create a a knowledge base for a specific problem, you could say:
“Write a knowledge base article for troubleshooting a VPN issue using these steps”
This prompt uses natural language to ask for a knowledge base article for a specific task with a specific set of principles that you set.
Provide clear and detailed instructions
Whether you want AI to create a Confluence page or refine your writing, you must tell it precisely what you want. When you write an AI prompt, provide clear and detailed instructions about the task.
Open-ended prompts usually result in more open-ended results, which means you have less control over your output. The more details you provide, the more targeted results you’ll get — as long as you’re not adding too many unnecessary words or details.
For example, if you want to refine your writing, you can say:
“Please refine the following paragraph to make it more engaging and professional [insert paragraph]. Use varied sentence structures and more descriptive language to enhance the readability.”
This prompt gives clear instructions for improving a piece of writing, specifying the desired outcome, the text to refine, and the techniques to use. This helps the AI to deliver a more focused and high-quality output.
Keep your prompts concise and straightforward
It can be tempting to include a lot of details when writing an AI prompt, but that’s not how you get the best results. Details are good, but lengthy prompts with too many details can confuse AI tools. Add essential details, but keep your prompts concise and straightforward to ensure they’re easy to parse.
If you need to add more details to refine your output, you can do that after you write your first prompt.
For example, ask AI to explain how social media marketing works. If the answer doesn’t include a detail you’re interested in, simply tell AI to add that detail to the explanation.
If you were to use a vague and long-winded prompt instead like, “Social media marketing is very important today with platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. It includes creating content, engaging with followers, running ads, and tracking performance. Can you explain all this and guide me on how to measure ROI?”, it can lead to poor results.
Instead of asking that, say:
“Explain social media marketing on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, including content creation, follower engagement, ad strategies, and ROI measurement.”
This prompt is straightforward and specific, and it clearly states the purpose of the email and what it should include without using unnecessary details or words.
Be conversational
We mentioned earlier that writing AI prompts is similar to having a conversation with AI — and it’s essential that you understand and take advantage of that. Write your prompts like you’re talking to a person to get more interactive results. If you don’t get the results you’re looking for, tell AI how to improve those results until you get what you want.
Other examples of effective prompting
Let’s look at a few AI prompt examples to help you better understand what works and what doesn’t when it comes to AI prompting.
Let’s say you want to learn more about a trending topic without reading countless articles. You can ask AI to summarize those articles for you:
“Summarize these articles: [insert URLs]. Contextualize why these announcements are important to [industry].”
This prompt tells AI to create a summary of a series of articles, but the context is critical. Adding that second sentence tells AI to put the information into context so you can better understand how an announcement impacts you and your industry.
If you need to email a colleague, you can use AI for that, too. For example:
“I am a project manager and my goal is to [insert goal]. Send an email to the [current project team members]. Ask for updates on the latest project and schedule a meeting for [date] at [time].”
By providing a persona, clearly defining the task, and adding context, AI can write an email that includes all the details that are important to you. When you receive the results, you can add additional information or ask AI to refine its writing or adopt a specific tone.
Strategies for implementing effective prompts
Now that you know what makes a good prompt, let’s look at some strategies you can use to write effective prompts that streamline collaboration and project management.
Structure your prompts for success
The structure of an AI prompt is one of the most important aspects. Ensure you’re structuring your prompts to guide AI through the task you want to perform. Keep your instructions clear and concise, but don’t be afraid to add context to ensure you get the desired results.
Different prompts require different structures and levels of detail. For example, you might want to tell AI exactly what to include in an email — but you can be more open-ended if you’re asking AI to summarize an article or offer insights based on the information you provide. For example, a prompt with great context and structure would be:
“Write an email to our client [insert client] requesting feedback on the recent project delivery. Include a brief summary of the project highlights, thank them for their collaboration, and ask specific questions about their satisfaction with the deliverables and any areas for improvement.”
This prompt clearly states the task at hand, provides specific details about what to include, gives context about the recipient, and provides clear instructions on how to structure the email.
Refine and adjust your prompts
One of the best things you can do to write better prompts is to adjust and refine your prompts as you go. You might not get the results you’re looking for with your first prompt, but getting better results could be as simple as adding a word or changing how you phrase something. Don’t abandon a prompt because it didn’t work the first time — try making some minor changes and see what you come up with.
Collaboration can also help adjust and refine prompting. As your team works with AI and learns to write more effective prompts, team members can share tips and tricks with each other.
Master writing effective prompts
Writing effective prompts is essential to getting more out of AI, but it can be more complicated than it seems on the surface. Understanding AI prompt best practices helps you keep your prompts consistent to get better results.
With Atlassian Intelligence, you can use AI to generate and summarize content, refine your writing, and keep everyone on your team on the same page. If you want to learn more about how Atlassian Intelligence helps your team work smarter, contact us to request a demo and try Atlassian Intelligence for yourself.