Prompt Engineering Made Easy: Non-Technical Guide

there's a lot of hype these days around the AI and the new jobs that it's creating and yeah as you might have already guessed I'm talking about prompt engineering here which is the art of talking to AI models now when you hear that term you might be thinking Hmm engineer that sounds very technical and I'm not a techie but hold up I'm here to tell you that award has been picked incorrectly because in the context of AI engineer isn't about being a code Wizard or Math Genius it's more like being a translator guiding the conversation between humans and AI to make sure they understand each other perfectly because it really is a field where a writer or a research assistant can shine just as brightly as a coder because as you might know a lot of these AI models today are only as good as the inputs you give them so really prompt engineering is the art of asking the correct questions and that is no easy task so here are three skills that will help you ask better questions that you might not have expected first

up we have philosophy whoa whoa you go are you seriously about to talk about philosophy inside of an AI related video how do those two link well my friends it might just be surprised because if you go back to the good old days of the ancient Greek thinkers like Plato and Aristotle we might just uncover some techniques that will help us craft higher quality prompts because in the realm of prompt engineering philosophy really equips you with the build to think critically understand complex Concepts and apply logic but Igor I'm not trying to solve the meaning of life I just want to get better results from AI all right it's time for a practical example so like a basic prompt might look like this what makes a good marketing campaign just a simple question that gives you some info no level of sophistication or depth here right so now let's add a philosophical touch to this little prompt here because this prompt right here tells us well you have to have a strong value proposition and you know you should be consistent and use analytics classic basic qbd4 response nothing groundbreaking here but what if we spice things up with a bit of Aristotle that's right our Greek body Aristotle gave us the concept of ethos pathos and logos those are the three pillars of persuasion and if we apply these Concepts here it could look something like this discuss the elements of a successful marketing campaign same as before considering Iris totals concept of ethos pathos and logos and look the proposition I'm making here is you gotta remix your basic problems with unexpected Concepts and philosophy is full of those and they're high quality because a lot of people fought a lot about these and now you're about to reap the rewards here so have a look at this they're often applied in marketing to design effective campaigns and here we go finally some worthy topics credibility or ethical appeal then we talk about the emotional appeal in a pathless driven campaign marketers might use emotionally charged imagery narratives music or other elements that resonate with the target audience or an emotional level that might not be the solution to all your marketing problems but this is a lot more concrete because we added something more concrete a concept from Aristotle alright let me give you another example here so again basic prompt how can I write better sales copy they run this we get a very general answer I should understand my target audience and I should have a call to action and tell a story because that's engaging alright all true but this is not what you're looking for if you're not a beginner and now the touch of philosophy let's just extend it with based on the Socratic method of questioning to understand customer needs better alright as you can see we got a whole lot more concrete there we're focusing on one topic to get precise results for that and we're using the Socratic method of questioning to explore that specific topic so we have very specific instructions very specific context and a very specific method to explore that results in a very specific answer that is actually useful and not just for beginners and I don't know judge yourself is this any better is this more useful like this just produced a step-by-step process on how to really understand your customers it starts generally but then you uncover pain points Implement Solutions position yourself as the solution then you show the benefits and overcome objections it's a great little framework that you can now apply to any topic and now you can follow up with write me a sample for my prompt engineering course and it will do just that you will get sales copy in this structure and there you go now that I look at it I would need a little more context as to what prompt engineering is in the context of chat GPT as this goes a little too broad but you will only learn that by trying so as always we'll just make it more specific not bad wouldn't it be a game changer to have such a comprehensive flexible and interactive approach to learning engineering presenting our all-in-one prompt engineering course but again the point here is that philosophy allows you to go deep because the deeper you go the more specific you're getting and specific inputs equal specific outputs now if you want to start exploring philosophy there's one podcast that I would recommend it is called philosophize this and I personally listen to over 100 episodes but then I do find listening easier than reading so

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we gotta talk about storytelling because this skill goes a long way when it comes to prompt engineering it's really about crafting a compelling narrative that resonates emotionally with your audience and provides context to enable them to think and engage more deeply one of the all-time greats in the discipline of Storytelling was Steve Jobs I don't think the man needs introduction but you gotta consider that his skills in storytelling went all the way from Apple to Pixar back to Apple and they changed the game in all of those companies he was really known for his ability to weave captivating narratives around the products that he was developing and he transformed technical launches that are usually boring and just for the Nerds into a spectacle where people tuned in to check out what he had to say and that's all for the power of story this man didn't just sell products he sold experiences and visions of the future and nowadays it's one of the most valuable brands on planet Earth so there's probably something there now let's apply some of his techniques in the context of prompt engineering so let's start with something basic again write a marketing strategy for our product no need to show you how basic this is anymore let me jump straight to the storytelling angle to this prompt there you go imagine your marketing executive at a startup launching a new fitness app that uses AI to create a personalized workout plan write a blog post introducing Sarah a busy working mom struggling to find time to exercise and show how our app can help her overcome her challenges and achieve her fitness goals now this approach I've been experimenting a lot with lately because it produces very different results if you talk to gpt4 in this storytelling fashion you just get a different angle to the result have a look for yourself as per usual different inputs different output and guess what if you input a story it's going to come out with a story life is all about balancing the spinning plates of family work and personal well-being no one knows this better than Sarah a hard-working mom juggling a full-time job a bustling family life and her own fitness goals as you can see directly took the storytelling approach which actually for Content creation often is the key to unlocking more engagement and as I always say the number one way to get better results from chatgpt is to include more context that is relevant there's no easier way to do that than to Simply tell a story because that's how we would communicate with other people might as well leverage that skill set to communicate with AI the result is more persuasive and relatable and all of a sudden gpt4 is not just filling in the gaps with various points of information it's telling an engaging story where everything ties into each other and if you want to get better at storytelling there's this one book I would recommend called building a story brand and it's more of a marketing book but it's one of the most relevant resources that I found on how to learn storytelling and how to apply to your writing or your prompts however there is one more skill I need you to know about when it comes to prompt engineering which you might not have expected and that is a skill of

creativity because as you can see being a good prompt engineer is not just about having technical knowledge it's a part of it but the main part really is using those technical understandings to creatively solve problems because trust me when I tell you that creativity is way more important in this discipline than most people imagine as crafting the right prompt is often an iterative process where you run into wall 10 15 20 times and then you find an angle that works and gets the results you want while going through all those iterations takes some creativity I think it's time for an example okay so how about this describe a day at the beach a solid one out of 10 when it comes to prompt quality I mean seriously you're giving gpt4 nothing to work with here just like invent everything the character the weather the story everything just a day at the beach doesn't get more generic than this I mean I guess you could say describe a day okay this is a zero out of ten but how about starting with the keyword imagine because if you start with imagine it opens up a lot of doors because you're not tied to reality anymore right you can pretty much imagine everything so let's say imagine you're a sand grain at a busy beach now describe your day that's pretty creative a completely different angle and we just imagined a scenario that wouldn't occur to us in our day-to-day and guess what creative in Creative out early morning Surfers appear their board presses down on my companions and me before they head out into the pulsating ocean as the surf crashes onto the shore I'm dampened by The Salty Sea spray that washes over us before the sun once again dries me out that is pretty damn creative okay but instead of looking at the day in the life of a sand Grain on the beach let's look at something a little more practical discuss the importance of social media marketing a classic prompt that I would rate at a 1 out of ten doesn't mean the result is a 1 out of 10 GPT 4 is smart but you probably know what I mean this is just going to produce beginner friendly results now what if we add a little bit of that creativity check this out what if I say imagine you're a brand new social media platform that's trying to compete with Tick Tock and Instagram how would you convince users to create more content on your platform now this is a completely different approach right as we're going backwards from the results that they're looking for here right we don't even care if it's a new social platform we're using creativity to look at what strategies these platforms might be deploying to attract more users away from their competition AKA strategies and if you align yourself with those strategies you might just do better on these platforms right let's have a look at the result right so if you read this you'll find out that they're going to need some ways for people to collaborate and guess what if they provide either and you participate they're going to be pushing you a little more right many other points here that you could use your advantage to understand how an entity like this would think and we got these results by asking a non-obvious question by deploying a little bit of creativity so look if you want to get better at these skills it's not just about learning some of the technical Concepts it can also be about educating yourself in some of these unexpected skills but let's not forget other skills that are essential here too strong communication critical thinking attention to detail and as mentioned a deep understanding of your model and how it works but that comes mostly from experience and if you found this video helpful and you want to learn more well you would probably enjoy my prompt engineering course where we explore various topics that enhance your ability to craft better prompts the first chapter that gets you set up is free and if you want more prompt engineering tips on YouTube right now well this video will show you exactly what mistakes to avoid when crafting prompts I'll see you