Write a prompt that gives an AI assistant your reader, your customers' language, your proof and the structure you want.
To get specific, usable copy from an AI writing assistant, give it a full brief: the information you would give a good freelance copywriter. A useful brief covers four things: the target reader, the goal of the piece, the structure, and the facts it may use.
Picture handing a freelancer one sentence: "Write a homepage for my workwear shop." You say nothing about your customers, your products, your prices or what the page is for. What comes back is generic, because generic is all anyone can write from that brief. An AI assistant is in the same position as that freelancer.
The target reader is who will read the piece, what situation they are in and what they already know. For a modest workwear shop, you might write: working women in Singapore, mostly 25 to 40, who wear modest clothing to the office. They find most workwear too revealing or too shapeless. Many are buying online for the first time from a small shop and worry about fit.
The goal of the piece is what the reader should do or think after reading. For the same shop, the goal is for readers to click through to the blouse collection, and the page should make them believe the blouses will fit and look professional.
The structure is the shape you want the copy to take. You already know several shapes from this course. One that suits a product page is problem, solution, proof, action: one headline, a two-sentence intro, three benefits each with one line of proof, then the call to action.
The facts are the details the AI is allowed to use. List them and tell the AI to use only these, which reduces the chance it invents its own. For the blouses, the example facts are: sizes XS to 3XL, bust and hip measurements for every size on each product page, free exchanges on size within 14 days, a hidden button placket so the blouses don't gap, and a rating of 4.8 by 63 buyers (an example figure).
Pasting in your customers' own words makes more difference than any other step. Copy the most relevant phrases from your voice-of-customer file into the prompt and ask the AI to use them, especially in the headline and intro. For the workwear shop, they might be:
"I'm tired of safety pins between my buttons." "Everything modest looks like a sack on me." "I need to look like I belong in the meeting." "I never know my size online."
With these in the prompt, the AI writes from the language your readers actually use instead of the average of all fashion copy, and its headlines are far more likely to name a situation the reader recognises.
If you have a piece of writing whose tone you like, paste a short sample and say what you like about it. It could be an email you wrote to a customer that got a warm reply, or a competitor's page you admire for its plainness.
Then say what to avoid, and be specific. An example avoid list: the words redefine, effortless, timeless, versatile and journey; no exclamation marks; no strings of three adjectives; no setup-and-twist contrasts; and write in plain English a busy woman would read on her phone. The patterns from lesson 8.1 make a ready avoid list. You can also give the AI your rules from module 7: short sentences, active voice, plain words.
AI is most useful when it gives you options to choose from. Ask for variations instead of a finished page, for example ten headline options, eight hooks, or five versions of the intro. Then choose using the criteria from lesson 2.4: clarity, specificity, relevance and believability.
Asking for many short variations has two benefits. You get more ideas than you would produce alone in the same time. You also stay the one who decides, so your judgement and your knowledge of your customers stay in charge.
Once you have chosen a headline, ask for the next section, then the one after that. Building a page in pieces lets you correct the direction at each step. If you ask for the whole page at once, you get everything back together and have to fix all of it at the same time.
Some of the variations will be weak. This is normal, and you can discard them. What matters is that good options now appear in the list.
Farah runs a modest workwear shop. In lesson 8.1 her prompt was one line. Her new prompt was about 250 words. It gave the reader, the goal, the structure and the facts, along with six customer phrases, a short sample of a customer email she liked, and a list of words to avoid.
She asked for ten headline options first. Among them were "No more safety pins between your buttons" and "Office blouses that fit, in sizes XS to 3XL, with measurements on every page". Both used her customers' words or her real facts, and neither would have appeared from the one-line prompt. Several of the ten were still weak, and she discarded them.
When you put the output from a one-line prompt beside the output from a full brief, you can see how much the quality depends on what you put in.
For the activity, use the same AI tool as in lesson 8.1 so the comparison is fair. Build your new prompt from the writing kit you already have, and keep both outputs, because lesson 8.4 asks you to submit your prompt alongside your work.
Rewrite your lesson 8.1 prompt so it includes the reader, the goal, the structure, the facts and your customer phrases. Put the two outputs side by side and compare them.
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