Everyone’s talking about AI these days, but let’s be honest—half the time you’re getting digital word salad instead of the brilliant response you expected. Welcome to the world of prompt engineering, where your ability to communicate with AI determines whether you get gold or garbage.
I learned this lesson the hard way last month while using ChatGPT to draft email templates for a client. My first attempt (“Write email templates for customer outreach”) gave me five painfully generic paragraphs that screamed “I’M WRITTEN BY AI AND I CARE NOTHING FOR YOUR BUSINESS.” Useless.
But here’s where prompt engineering makes all the difference. When I rewrote my request with specificity—“Write an email template for following up with enterprise software clients who haven’t responded in 30 days. The tone should be helpful but concerned, mention our recent product update on security features, and include a specific call to action for a brief 15-minute check-in call”—I got something my client actually wanted to use.
The secret to great prompts isn’t length—it’s precision. Think of AI as an enthusiastic intern from another planet. They’re smart but have no common sense or context unless you provide it.
My three go-to prompt techniques:
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Context sandwiching: Start with background information, then your request, then your intended use case.
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Role and audience specification: “You are an SEO expert writing for small business owners who have limited technical knowledge.”
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Example-driven instruction: “Here’s an example of the style I want: [example]. Create something similar about [new topic].”
When all else fails, my favorite trick is iterative prompting. Rather than writing a perfect prompt upfront, start simple and then tell the AI what to fix: “That’s too formal. Make it sound like I’m chatting with a colleague over coffee.”
Remember that next time you’re staring at AI output wondering, “Who would ever say this?” The problem isn’t the AI—it’s your prompt. And unlike most professionals, AI will never get annoyed when you ask it to redo something for the fifth time.