Introduction
Have you ever wished you had the secret to crafting the perfect AI prompt?
With all the chatter out there, it can feel overwhelming—what actually works and what’s just fluff?
Well, buckle up!
In this episode, we’re diving deep into the real art of prompt writing, especially for those in engineering and software. Join Mikkel Svold, founder of Montanus, as he reveals his unique methodology that can transform your AI interactions.
From defining AI’s role to giving it clear boundary examples—Mikkel breaks it down step-by-step.
This isn’t just a chat; it’s a masterclass!
Learn how longer prompts can be your secret weapon, streamlining automation without constant oversight.
Whether you’re an AI newbie or a seasoned pro, there’s a goldmine of insights waiting for you.
So, tune in, elevate your AI game, and share this with anyone eager to master the art of prompt writing!
What You’ll Learn
1. Crafting effective AI prompts for unique business needs.
2. Designing long prompts for optimal AI-API performance.
3. Structuring prompts: roles, tasks, tone, audience, and output.
4. Leveraging examples to guide AI creativity and boundaries.
5. Asking AI the right questions for precise prompt results.
Episode Transcript (AI Generated)
Now we’re going to go through with you guys how we write prompts, because although you can probably find hundreds and hundreds… well, thousands and thousands of different blog posts and, you know, people being clever about prompts, and I’m sure most of them are fairly decent, and I’m sure that this talk that we’re having right now is probably also going to be one of those fairly decent ones, because I’m just gonna go through how we do it. That’s not the same as saying that this is the way to do it. You gotta do the work yourself, you gotta put in the work. But, it occurred to me that we do prompts, I think in a different way from the majority of people using AIs, Large Language Models, ChatGPT, Claude, whatever they’re called. Now, for those of you who don’t know me, I’m Mikkel Svold and I’m the owner and founder of Montanus. We produce content for our clients and those clients being mainly engineering companies, advisors, it could be software companies, supply chain stuff. All that kinda stuff as long as it’s a little bit complex, that’s where we really thrive. And then we help them build podcast universes, blog posts, etc., all that kinda stuff. Now, like I said today, I really want to go through how we do a prompt. How do we structure a prompt? Because there’s a specific structure to what goes into our prompts. And first of all, what you need to know is probably that we do long prompts. So we’re, well sometimes if we go into ChatGPT itself and then kind of have a chat with it I can go shorter prompts, so I can go, hey brainstorm this and that for me and then it gives me a little brainstorm. Then I’ll feedback on that. I’ll say oh this is not good. I like the first two ones. Can you you know extrapolate more that kind of stuff? That is one way of doing it. But the prompts that I want to talk to you about today are the ones that where you kind of want to have a specific output from a single prompt. Where is this useful? Well, it’s useful if you use the ChatGPT API. So if you are not actually inside the ChatGPT client or the Claude client or Perplexity client, whatever they’re all called, if you’re not in the actual client writing a prompt and kind of chatting with it but you want it as like a background working horse that can kind of lift some of the heavy loads for you while you are actually not even seeing what’s happening. If that’s the case that is really brilliant for having like fully automated setups where you’re not involved in the actual chatting with it. And when you do so you really do need to have a long prompt or I find it that’s where I get the best results. Alright, so I can see when I look through the prompt I have it right here in front of me when I have our prompts I can see that it’s kind of divided into different sections and I want to go through them one by one. So first of all, the first section that we have is I want to tell the AI agent what it is. It is who is it? Alright, so that could be act as a super creative LinkedIn copywriter, act as a journalist, act as a science journalist, act as an editor. It could be all those kinds of things you guys already do this I’m sure because this has been like, you know, the Holy Grail in chatting with an AI for the last two years but that is the first one so we define the role and then I am telling it what it is that I want to give the AI. So what will the AI get from me? Okay, so that could be I’m giving you a blog post, I’m giving you an email, I’m giving you a transcript from an interview and giving you you know, all those kinds of things. Right, and then I surely say what is it that I really want the AI to do? So that can be I want you to create a LinkedIn post. Okay, fair enough. Then the next section in our prompts goes out to be more like informative about how I want the answer to be. Okay, and this is actually more or less what the rest of the prompt is going to be. So first of all, I’m providing it with the tone of voice so I’m saying you need to write in this and that tone of voice and then I have a description of the tone of voice and then I’m writing you need to write for the following target audience so I’m presenting the audience for the post that it’s going to do for the piece of text that is going to do and I have kind of a kind of a thorough description of that target audience, so not only it could be like I wanted to write your target audience is like lawyers with 15 plus years of experience, but I also want to tell it how they communicate so I’ll say they’re well-versed in law or in, you know, law jargon. So don’t be afraid of using law terms. I also want to tell it not to dumb things down if that’s the case or if all two dumb things down if that’s the other case and I also want to tell it what is my audience interested in so what kinds of things so if you’re writing to CEOs, that could be, you know, CEOs are typically interested in how to drive a business forward, innovation, market intelligence, all those kinds of things. Maybe economy or finances those kinds of things you want to tell it this is what I want you to focus on because that’s important for our target audience. So basically not having it to think too much, but kind of providing as much as you know, okay then I’m telling it what is the final output of whatever it’s doing so if it’s a blog post I’m gonna write you are the final out the final outcome of what we doing today is a blog post that will go on this on that website. They should be SEO optimized. I know you can’t say it like that, but I don’t really care but it should be optimized for search and all this kind of stuff, right? And then I’m telling it how I want the answer to be structured so that could be I want you to include a title, I want you to include a it could be a snippet text for Google, it could be keywords, it could be all kinds of things. I could or I could also tell it that I want you to include three paragraphs per section and then a heading for every front throughout the blog post so to say right. So I’m going to tell it exactly what it is that I want, okay, and then I really wanted to think so what I’m doing now is I’m saying good before you begin your task before you begin solving this task that I’m giving you I want you to go through the entire input that I will provide you and I want you to think really careful about it, and I want you to think really careful about how you can kind of take that input and then turn it into something that’ll be relevant for the target audience and how you can structure your piece of text to fit the needs that I have and that I’ve already described for you. Okay, so actually right now, and this is the end of the prompt, so right now we’ve already made quite a long prompt. I would say it’s probably like 300 words right so this is already quite a bit longer than most people are prompting because most people they would do like 1 or 2 sentences and then they would chat with it. But we don’t have the opportunity to chat because we’re using the API solution here so we only have like 1 shot. We needed to know everything in one go. Okay, and now here comes the secret sauce and this is where I find people it this is where it gets a little bit you know, nitty-gritty and you need to put in some work because otherwise you won’t get the the output that you really want. So I want to provide the AI with examples of how I wanted to look right. So if it’s a blog post for instance, I could say here’s an example off a really good paragraph here’s an example of a really good heading here’s an example of this and that so you’d have different examples and provided with as many examples as you find as you kind of how do you say that fit meet need fit seem fit beam fit provide it with the examples that you think is necessary for it to understand. What are the outer boundaries of where you want to go? Okay, so instead of just having a lot of examples that are mainly the same aim for the boundary examples. So aim for the examples that are if you for instance if you want to have it write posts for social media you’d maybe have one post that it very very short and you would have one post very very long and you would have one post that’s really hard structured with like lists and all that or you’d have posts that are mainly just prose you’d have storytelling you’d have you know, all the kinds of posts that are within what you want? So you want to give it the boundary post or the boundary examples. It should be like this within this kind of kind of sphere so to check and usually, I provide the AI with if it kind of depends on what it is that I want it to write but for for instance for social media posts, I would provide it with you know, four to six I would say examples of how I want it to respond okay, and when you have that that is actually the end of the post that is the end of the the prompt I want to say okay. So summing up just to kind of get everyone on the same page because we already running on the time so you want to first define. Who is the AI? What role is it? Then you want to kind of state the task and then you want to provide it with a good thorough description of tone of voice you want to provide it with a good thorough description of target audience you want it to know what is the end result of the thing that it is producing what is like not not how should it look? But what where do you take it afterwards? Where does this piece of text go if it’s a billboard text that you want it? To know that it’s a billboard text that should be on the highway somewhere, right? Because that will be maybe shorten shorten the sentences make them more powerful because when you’re going on the highway you don’t have time to read a long film prose, okay, and then of course you want to or not of course, but what you want to also you want to show it how you want you at bit the answer structure and you also want to provide it with a lot of examples that will kind of show it the outer rims of what it is allowed to do what are the boundaries of the creativity and that is a post ladies and gentlemen so that is a post that is a prompt I want to say well it could have sounded it could have you know, but the ladies and gentlemen and all it could have sound so good anyway, that is the prompt, ladies and gentlemen, I’m gonna try that again and it’s really not. Um, let me just see here. How long is this prompt? Actually that I’m sitting with I don’t even know. I can’t really count it, but I would say probably like 300 to 500 words something like that. Work on your prompts if you only have one shot or go to the interfaces go to the go to the client themselves and then chat your way through that. A good exercise is also to kind of ask the AI what does it need from you in order to you know, produce the output that you really desire. Alright, that is it for today’s content universe I hope you enjoyed and I do not like the word prompt engineering, but you have to put in work in kind of what engineering I’m sorry, but you have to put in the work writing your prompts so so it knows what it is that you want because they are still kind of dumb and they still will produce really bad results often. That is it for today. Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much for joining the content universe today and if you liked this episode please do give it a like give it a thumbs up and I know that you can also subscribe and hit that little bell button and you’ll get the next episode right in your notification center somewhere and that really just helped me and helped help this podcast live its life. So share it with someone you think would be would be interested in this exact episode and then yeah I hope you to see on another planet. Cheers
