If you have ever received a generic or unhelpful response from an AI, the problem might not be the tool but your prompting style. This guide, based on Google’s AI Essentials course is probably the clearest breakdown you’ll come across to help you structure your prompts in a way that will drastically change the quality of your results.
It’s something I wish I found sooner myself, and I hope you find it useful in your daily life.
- Surface the Implied Context
AI doesn’t know what you’re thinking, (at least for now) so you must explicitly state your background. For example, if you are a vegetarian asking for restaurant tips, you need to mention that; otherwise, the AI will give you meat-heavy suggestions.
Example: Instead of asking “How do I negotiate a raise?”, try: “I received a 10% increase last year, I am the highest performer on my team this year, and the industry average is a 12% increase. Help me brainstorm a 15% raise request”.
- Zero-Shot vs. Few-Shot Prompting
In the world of AI, a “shot” is simply an example.
- Zero-shot: Asking for something with no examples. e.g. “Write me a pickup line for a dating app”.
- One-shot: Providing one example for the AI to follow. e.g. “Write me a pickup line; use this successful one my friend wrote as a reference”.
- Few-shot: Providing two or more examples. The more relevant examples you provide, the more tailored the AI’s output will be.
- Chain of Thought Prompting
For complex tasks, don’t ask for the final product all at once. Instead, divide the task into manageable stepsto help the model produce more accurate results.
Example (Writing a Cover Letter):
- Step 1:Ask the AI to write only an attention-grabbing hook based on your resume and the job description.
- Step 2:After tweaking the hook, ask the AI to draft the body paragraph.
- Step 3: Finally, ask it to write the closing paragraph.
If you give AI vague instructions, you’ll get vague results. If you give it clarity, context, and direction, you’ll unlock depth, precision, and creativity that feels almost unfair.
The future will be shaped by the people who know how to guide AI, not just use it.
Good luck!
Isaac Akanni is a Digital Transformation Leader and Customer Growth Manager-Africa at Infobip