Odd sales pitch
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Tips for the best AI prompts
Here are the top tips for AI prompts that I use to get the best out of AI. 99% of my AI use is ChatGPT (I’m fortunate enough to use the Enterprise licence at work).
Many of these tips are based on talking to colleagues, listening to podcasts and reading books – thanks to everyone that I have learned from.
My intention is to keep this list up to date. Please use the comment section below to send me your suggestions.
1. Start all my prompts with…
There are at least 7 tips in this first point alone. Describe the type of personality you want the AI to perform, and how you want to be answered. I have set up a custom GPT to add this pre-ample to all my prompts. You can simply paste this in each time you use an AI:
Avoid using any consulting jargon and leans into confident, assertive, and sometimes provocative statements. Respond using a style that avoids sounding that it was written using AI. All responses should be readable by a 10 year old. Each response ends with 1 or 2 thought-provoking questions to engage deeper discussion and offer a unique viewpoint. Do not make things up or hallucinate. I want to...
2. Tell me how to do something – you don’t have to give me the answer
Describe what you are trying to do, and then ask for the best frameworks, tools or methods.
I am trying to... Tell me the best frameworks that I should use to do this.
3. Give me options
When we speak to others, we like options rather than their opinion on what to do. Now ask AI to do the same. This applies for drafting emails or other communications, or preparing content.
I want to... Give me 5 options of what I can do.
4. Context is vital
You know why you are asking this question – the AI doesn’t. Try to describe the context beforehand. Here are some options:
I am sending an email to a customer about.
or
Rewrite this text that I can use to email to a customer.
or
I am answering a proposal from a customer. The proposal is for... [give relevant details, such as the length of the answer].
or
Give me some ideas about fishing. Bullet points are OK for now because I am brainstorming.
or
Write paragraphs for my lecture introduction about fishing. Do not use bullet points.
5. Don’t use AI to write your close relative’s birthday card.
I was fortunate enough to interview Keith B Carter on a podcast. He wrote a whole book on how to use AI. He suggests you never write your mum’s birthday card using AI. I’ll extend that to any close relative or friend!
Further reading:
Google’s moral advertising flaw
The news about Google will stop allowing cryptocurrency companies to buy advertising demonstrates how we still haven’t cracked content censorship on the Internet.
Has Google become a content provider that can ban certain types of advertising? Until now, Google was purely a search engine selling pixels on user’s search results. They weren’t responsible for any of the signposted or copyrighted content.
(The same applies to Facebook and pretty much any other advertising funded content platform).
Note that my issue isn’t with the cryptocurrency companies. My issue is that Google and Facebook have shattered the professional journalism industry, only to then lay down their own moral advertising code of conduct when they are among the last remaining mass publishers.
The future of digital advertising
I was kindly invited to an event today called “The Ad Apocalypse And The Rise Of Interactive Brand Experiences”, hosted by wayin. Wayin runs a content management system for brands to run interactive campaigns in their digital advertising.
Although the event proved how wayin was the answer to several of life’s challenges, there were a few interesting thought leadership pieces at the event which I’ve tried to capture below.
My apologies for brevity in the notes format and any spelling mistakes.
Wayin introduction, Richard Jones (Wayin CEO)
Richard started by describing how Mondelez has pulled £100M from their advertising recently due to the lack of impact that their digital advertising spending is having. They’ve never pulled ad spend before the holiday season. Continue reading The future of digital advertising
The Guardian newspaper Supporter Membership model
This is a neat idea from the Guardian with some clever language – instead of pushing more traditional subscription models, they are offering “Guardian supporter membership” for £5/ month.
Whilst competitors are pushing many more adverts over their well designed pages, or moving to a pure subscription model, the Guardian have sharpened their copywriting pencils (err, keyboards?) and produced a more enticing product offering – as shown here https://membership.theguardian.com/about/supporter?INTCMP=MEMBERSHIP_BANNER_TEST_A
Continue reading The Guardian newspaper Supporter Membership model
Happy 5th Birthday!
It’s true… as you get older, time seems to accelerate. It feels like only a few weeks ago I was writing last year’s Happy Birthday post.
I started this blog because I found myself telling several people the same piece of news and opinion. I took their advice and created this blog.
Last year I said that there had been “a step change in traffic, with pretty much double the level of traffic as two years’ ago”. This year, traffic almost doubled again, with almost 20,000 sessions on the site over the last year.
Reading tab list over the holidays
We were extremely busy at work during November and December, so I spent a few hours over the holidays catching up on blogs which I follow. Continue reading Reading tab list over the holidays
Book Review: Real Leaders Don’t Do PowerPoint by Christopher Witt
Real Leaders Don’t Do PowerPoint is a great book which will help wean you off PowerPoint and help you to present more effectively.
About a year ago I stopped using PowerPoint during my presentations of the latest Digital Services offering from Endava. I had presented it dozens of times before, and knew the details of the offering. Once I stopped taking my laptop to presentations, colleagues in the room began commenting about the increased passion and asked me to present more, often to a more senior audience. Continue reading Book Review: Real Leaders Don’t Do PowerPoint by Christopher Witt
Update: Recommended web reading
Post holiday, I’ve tidied up (pruned is more like it) my RSS feeds in Outlook and it’s been a while since I shared the RSS feeds which I subscribe to. The updated list is below. Continue reading Update: Recommended web reading
11 lessons about innovation from the New York Times
Whilst doing some research at work on innovation within the Publishing industry, a colleague of mine found a leaked report from the New York Times from March this year (the full article is at the end of this page).
At 94 pages, it’s a must-read for anyone within Publishing. I took 11 key points from the document:
- (page 16) Hallmarks of disruptors… number 4: “Initially inferior to existing products.” This is so true. Almost every time we work on a new innovative project, there will always be someone criticising that product A does things better, or product B is more comprehensive. The answer is twofold – firstly, you can have something more superior, but it will take a lot longer and cost a lost more money; and secondly, it’s part and parcel of developing something new. Remember Twitter’s outages? Remember how basic Facebook looked?
- Only a third of NYT readers visit the homepage. Just think of the effort in designing the homepage! Google is great at providing users links directly into articles, and users share articles not homepages. This is the proof. Continue reading 11 lessons about innovation from the New York Times