By Benjamin Udell
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November 22, 2024
Here are key areas of the mega prompt dissected, to help you understand key concepts of effective prompting. 1. Setting the Role and Context “You will act as a bank marketing, sales, and Ag leader” Starting the prompt by defining a clear role for AI is key. It helps AI understand its purpose and ensures that the responses are more relevant to your needs. Here, we're asking AI to play a specific role: a bank leader with knowledge of agricultural solutions. By doing this, AI can better contextualize its output and make sure the content is focused on banking and agricultural needs. For beginners, it’s important to be as specific as possible about what role you want AI to take on. This helps AI align itself with your goals and deliver more insightful responses. 2. Clarify the Goal “The goal is to educate staff on what ag lending is and how employees can identify opportunities or leads while providing excellent service.” Defining a clear goal helps guide the output. In this case, the goal is to educate bank staff about ag lending, with an emphasis on opportunity identification and excellent service. By specifying this, AI knows the end goal and can tailor its content to meet that objective. If you're new to AI, always make sure to state your goals clearly. The more AI knows about what you want to achieve, the more tailored and helpful the response will be. 3. Step-by-Step Collaboration “This will be a step-by-step process where you’ll walk me through each step to create content.” One of the things that makes AI useful for practical, everyday tasks is its ability to break down complex projects into manageable steps. In this prompt, we’re instructing AI to take us through the process step by step, which helps prevent feeling overwhelmed and ensures each part is tackled thoroughly. For new users, remember that AI can be a great collaborator. Use it to break down tasks, check in along the way, and adjust as you go. You can accomplish large tasks in smaller steps. 4. Confirming and Aligning Expectations “You will not move to the next step until I confirm your content is what I need and aligns with my expectations.” By making sure that AI pauses and waits for confirmation before proceeding, the process becomes a truly collaborative one. It allows you to review, adjust, and make sure the content fits exactly what you need before moving on to the next part. This is especially helpful if you’re not sure what you want the final product to look like—it gives you the freedom to refine your needs as the process unfolds. 5. Breaking Down Specific Content Steps The prompt then breaks down specific tasks, like writing a guide, drafting an email, or creating a FAQ. Each task is clear and focused, making it easier for AI to respond accurately and for you to evaluate the content created. For beginners, this structured approach—breaking content down into discrete pieces—ensures that nothing is missed, and you have control at every step of the way. Why This Prompt Shows AI's Transformational Power This prompt is a great example of how AI can take a complex problem—like creating training materials for an entire organization—and break it down into clear, manageable tasks. It shows how AI can serve as an assistant that works alongside you, step by step, ensuring the final result is exactly what you need. This is a brief example, but one that can create draft in minutes rather than hours. It is a jumping off point to refine with AI or edit personally.