🏁 Advanced ChatGPT Prompting

Hey there! Welcome to Advanced ChatGPT Prompting, this is a guide that takes you through many different nuanced aspects of ChatGPT prompting to ensure you get the most out of your premium subscription.

Please reach out and let us know if you have any questions.

Table of Contents

1. Prompt Cheat Sheet

Context clarity

Begin your prompt with a clear context statement to help ChatGPT-4 understand your request.

For example:

"As a film expert, provide a brief analysis of the movie Inception."

Limit response length

To control the length of the generated response, include a limit in your prompt.

For example:

"In three sentences, explain the basic concept of blockchain technology."

Request a specific format

If you need the response in a particular format, include this requirement in your prompt.

For example:

"Create a numbered list of the top five benefits of using solar energy."

Adjust the tone

Specify the tone you want the AI to use in its response.

For example:

"Explain the process of photosynthesis in simple, everyday language for a young audience."

Step-by-step instructions

If you need a detailed explanation, ask for step-by-step guidance in your prompt.

For example:

"Provide step-by-step instructions on how to create a basic website using HTML and CSS."

Change the temperature

Temperature controls the randomness or diversity of the generated outputs.

  • A high temperature of 1.0 or above will make ChatGPT more creative.

  • A low temperature of 0.1 or lower will make ChatGPT more conservative.

Train ChatGPT to write its own prompts for you

If you don't know how to structure your questions to ChatGPT, simply ask it.

For example:

"What's the best prompt for ChatGPT to learn my writing styles and respond to my emails for me?"

Create unique business ideas

Generating lists with ChatGPT is straightforward. Ask ChatGPT to suggest innovative angles or perspectives.

For example:

"Generate unique angles or strategies for the topic 'How to increase your creative output.' Emphasize innovative ideas."

Simulate an expert

You can get ChatGPT to become an expert in a given subject.

Then, you can engage in conversation or request it to produce content from the perspective of that specific character.

For example, we turned ChatGPT into a Harvard Marketing graduate: 

"As a Harvard Marketing graduate and skilled content creator, guide me in crafting social media content that resonates with AI enthusiasts. Emphasize uncommon and expert questions to ask"

Train ChatGPT on your email writing style, and respond to emails in your tone

First, enter this prompt:

"I want you to act as my assistant. I will provide you with emails, and I want you to respond back with an email response. However, I want you to learn my writing style, so your response sounds like me. Therefore, I want you to send me three sample emails that I will respond to in my writing style. This way you will know my writing style."

This prompt will essentially have chatGPT help us train it.

You should get three sample emails that you have to respond to as your response.

From here, feed ChatGPT your recent emails it has it learned your tone.

Now, prompt ChatGPT this:

"I want you to respond to this email in my writing style: [paste your email here]"

Generate responses table format

Super easy to do - yet we still get a ton of questions on how to do it.

For example:

“Create a table for top AI tools. Include the following columns: Name, Category, and Oneliner. Here are the Tools that I want to summarize: [tools]”

2. ChatGPT Alternate Formatting Tips

Paragraph Format [DEFAULT]

This formatting option is used for longer passages of text, organized in paragraphs with proper indentation and spacing for readability.

Example Prompt:

“Can you explain the history of the Industrial Revolution in Europe in detail?”

Application: Detailed explanations of complex topics or historical events, academic papers or reports, literary analysis or critiques, etc.

List Format

This formatting option is used to organize information into bullet points or numbered lists for clarity and ease of understanding.

Example prompt:

“Please provide a list of the top 10 tourist attractions in New York City.”

Application: Recipes, instructions, step-by-step guides, product features or specifications, etc.

Code Format

This formatting option is used to display and execute programming code in a clear and organized manner.

Example prompt:

“Please provide a code snippet for a function that calculates the sum of two numbers using Python.”

Application: Programming tutorials, code snippets, algorithm explanations, technical documentation, developer help, etc.

Table Format

This formatting option is used to organize information in a tabular format for easy comparison and analysis.

Example prompt:

“Could you create a table comparing the specifications of the latest smartphones in the market?”

Application: Product comparison, financial data representation, price list, survey results analysis, etc.

Diagram Format

This formatting option is used to visually represent systems or processes with diagrams or flowcharts for better understanding.

Example prompt:

“Could you create a table comparing the specifications of the latest smartphones in the market?”

Application: Process flowcharts, system architecture, decision-making flowcharts, network diagrams, etc.

Note: It is vital you include [in the form of a code snippet] or ChatGPT may not solve your request.

Math Format

This formatting option is used to display mathematical equations and symbols in a clear and organized way [this often defaults to paragraph format].

Example prompt:

Could you solve x3+y3+z3=k?

Application: Science or mathematics research papers, mathematical formulas or equations, scientific data representation, etc.

Interactive Format

This formatting option is used to create interactive experiences within the text for greater engagement and participation.

Example prompt:

Could you create an interactive quiz to test knowledge of the US Constitution?

Application: Educational quizzes, games, online courses, virtual tours, etc.

Multimedia Format

This formatting option is used to include links to images, videos, and audio in the text for more engaging and dynamic content.

Example prompt:

Can you share a link to a tutorial on Photoshop? Or where I can find good tutorials?

Application: Third-party learning, tutorials, references, podcast search, etc.

Note: GPT-4 doesn't like to share links - it tells you to go search for things yourself.

Final Note

The example prompts and formats listed may not work with certain models [or chat histories] of ChatGPT.

3. Five Advanced Prompt Techniques You Should Consider

Example (zero-shot prompt):

Describe the process of photosynthesis in three steps.

You can use the Structured Guidance approach to build more complex prompts to further enhance clarity and precision within your specific use case. Template or one-shot prompting is especially useful in this scenario. 

Create some ideas for a blog post about growing cactus. Use this format:

[brief summary of the idea]

[title and subtitle for a long-form blog post based on the idea]

[title and subtitle for a listicle blog post based on the idea]

[possible target groups for this idea outside the cactus grower community]

Constraining Guidance

With this technique, you guide ChatGPT toward desired results by adding specific constraints to your prompts. 

Explain quantum mechanics without using technical jargon.

By adding multiple constraints, you can further steer the model in the direction you want. 

Suggest a healthy dinner recipe with these constraints:
vegan, high protein, and under 30 minutes to prepare.

Contextual Guidance

If your conversation exceeds the number of words ChatGPT can use in its context window, the context window is shifted, which means that previous messages and results are not considered by the AI. This is often described as a thematic digression or straying from the model.

In the Contextual Guidance approach, you use a series of prompts and responses that build on each other, gradually constructing a context window with all the information to be considered.

The step-by-step structure allows for refinement and flexibility of the context during the process. 

List a buch of ideas for a blog post about [topic].
Analyze these ideas and summarize its strengths and weaknesses.
Find new topics that address the weaknesses.

Role Prompting & Combining Patterns

Together with elements from Structured Guidance and/or Constraining Guidance, you can use role prompting to set a very strong contextual framework.

Example:

  1. Basic roleplay prompt:

You are a film production consultant that helps me realize a short movie with a $2000 budget. You use your expertise in filmmaking, storytelling, and logistics to brainstorm ideas on how to tackle this movie project.

  1. Additional Constraining Guidance approach:

Your responses always include these three angles: narrative techniques,

filmmaking techniques and production logistics & organization.

  1. Additional Structured Guidance approach:

Use this template for your responses:

Story: [Narrative technique expertise]

Filmmaking: [Filmmaking expertise]

Production: [production expertise]

  1. Final prompt:

You are a film production consultant that helps me realize a short movie

with a $2000 budget. You use your expertise in filmmaking, storytelling, and

logistics to brainstorm ideas on how to tackle this movie project.

Your responses always include these three angles: narrative techniques,

filmmaking techniques and production logistics & organization.

Use this template for your responses:

Story: [Narrative technique expertise]

Filmmaking: [Filmmaking expertise]

Production: [production expertise]

Prompt Programming

This approach leverages ChatGPT’s extensive knowledge of programming languages and turns it into a pseudocode-based method to quickly iterate over any topic or task. 

You are a programmable AI interface. These are your commands:

"""

Command: /title

Description: The command creates blog post titles.

Usage:

/title "[word/topic/problem, or a natural-language string describing the

topic of the blog post]" [# of outputs] --instruct "[string with instructions

to follow when writing the title]"

"""

Respond with "Aye" when ready