Role
Who should it write as? “You are the owner of a small catering company” sets vocabulary and viewpoint.
AI for business · Part 2 of 7
How to write AI prompts that get useful answers
Generic question, generic answer. Give the assistant five pieces of information and the first draft is usually one you can use.
Why answers come back generic
The assistant only knows what you tell it.
Type “write a post about our new menu” and you get something that could belong to any restaurant in the country. The assistant is not being lazy. It has no idea who you are, who reads your posts, what is on the menu or how you normally sound, so it fills the gaps with the most average answer it can find.
A prompt is a brief. The more it reads like the brief you would give a freelancer, the less editing you do afterwards. You do not need special words or tricks. You need five pieces of information.
The five parts
Role, task, context, format, limits.
Task
One clear job with a verb: write, summarise, compare, rewrite, list. One job per prompt works best.
Context
The facts it cannot guess: who the reader is, what happened, prices, dates, what you have already tried.
Format
What the answer should look like: an email under 120 words, five bullet points, a table with three columns.
Limits
What to avoid: no jargon, no made-up facts, British spelling, do not promise a delivery date.
An example
Paste something you wrote before and say “match this tone”. Nothing improves a draft faster.
Try it
Build a prompt in a minute.
Prompt builder
Choose a starting point, change the fields, then copy the prompt into any assistant.
Nothing you type here leaves your browser. Replace the example details with your own, and leave out personal data.
Before and after
The same request, briefed properly.
Before
“Write an email to a customer about a late delivery.”
After
“You are the owner of a small furniture shop. Write an email to a customer whose sofa will arrive five days late because the supplier missed a shipment. The new delivery date is Friday 21st. Offer free delivery as an apology. Keep it under 120 words, warm and direct, British spelling. Do not blame the customer or make promises beyond the new date.”
The second version takes thirty seconds longer to write and saves ten minutes of editing. It also gives the assistant the only thing it cannot invent: the facts.
Then have a conversation
The first answer is a draft, not a verdict. Reply to it the way you would to a colleague:
- “Shorter, and lose the first sentence.”
- “Less formal. I would never say ‘kindly’.”
- “Give me three different subject lines.”
- “What have I forgotten to mention?”
- “Before you write anything, ask me the questions you need answered.”
That last one is worth remembering. When you are not sure what context to give, let the assistant interview you.
Save your best prompts
Write the brief once, reuse it every day.
If you explain your business at the start of every chat, you are doing the same work repeatedly. Every main assistant has a way to store standing instructions and reference files, so each new chat already knows your business, your tone and your rules. The names differ, the idea is the same.
Keep going
More in this series.
Part 3 of 7Email and enquiriesSummarise long threads and draft replies in your own voice, without sounding like a robot.Part 4 of 7Meeting notesRecord, summarise and follow up on meetings, and what to tell people before you press record.Part 5 of 7Marketing contentPlan a week of posts, write captions and make images and short videos for your business.
All seven guides: AI for business, the full series.
FAQ
Questions we get asked.
Short answers, in plain English.
What is a prompt?
A prompt is the instruction you type into an AI assistant. A good one reads like a short brief: who it is writing as, what to do, the facts, the format and what to avoid.
How long should a prompt be?
As long as the facts need. Three or four sentences is typical. Length is not the goal; the missing facts are.
Do the same prompts work in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot?
Yes. The five-part structure works in all of them. The wording of the answer will differ slightly between assistants.
Should I be polite to an AI?
It does no harm, and it makes little difference to the answer. Being clear and specific matters far more.
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