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How I use one-shot prompting to write better and faster with ChatGPT

The missing piece in your ChatGPT writing strategy

Hey Warrior,

When you’re using ChatGPT to write something from scratch it’s often a hit or miss. Prompts like “write a blog post about x” don’t work well, we all know this.

Now most gurus will say: “You have to add more context!”

And while context will definitely improve things, it’s unlikely to solve all your problems.

This is because you’re still not giving ChatGPT enough guidance and there are still too many variables for it to create a piece of writing that matches your expectations.

That’s why one of the best ways to write anything with ChatGPT, is to combine your context with one-shot prompting.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

  • What is one-shot prompting and how can you use it for writing?

  • A prompt template that combines context and one-shot prompting for you to use

  • A concrete example of drafting a landing page with one-shot prompting

  • Ideas for other assets that you can create with one-shot prompting

Read time: 5 minutes

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🤖 How to use one-shot prompting for writing

At the basic level, one-shot prompting is to show ChatGPT one example and tell it to create something that is similar to that.

So first off, what you’ll want to do is to find one really good example of whatever it is you want to write. This could be:

  • a really good landing page with awesome copywriting

  • a newsletter welcome email that you like

  • a video script that was really convincing

I am mostly focusing on digital marketing assets here, but of course it could be anything else.

Next, you construct a prompt that:

  1. Lets you feed in your personalized context

  2. Takes the original example (f.e. of the landing page, welcome email etc)

  3. You tell ChatGPT to rewrite the example for your needs by considering the context you have provided

So what you’re essentially doing is providing ChatGPT a very clear blueprint to work with.

All ChatGPT needs to do now, is to replace the right bits and pieces of that blueprint to personalize it with your context.

Here’s the prompt template I use for this task:

You are a world-class …

Your task is to rewrite the provided [asset] below, using the specific context I give you.

[Enter your CONTEXT. This can be as detailed as you want and have multiple sections.]

[Paste the ASSET, i.e. landing page, email, video script etc]

It’s a pretty simple prompt, but because you’re providing a lot of context and an elaborate blueprint, you don’t need much else.

Now lets walk through an example to see this in action…

🧠 How to write landing page copy with one-shot prompting

Ok, let’s use this method to write the copy for a landing page.

The first thing you should do is to find a landing page that you like and that would fit whatever it is you’re working on.

In my case I decided to go with this landing page by Matt Gray, since I wanted to test out inserting a low-ticket product into my acquisition funnel.

I then use the following prompt to rewrite the copy for my landing page:

You are a world-class copywriter.

Your task is to rewrite the original landing page below, using the specific context I give you.

Below I will give you details about my course content, USPs and details about me.

[Details about my course]
[USPs]
[Details about me]

ORIGINAL LANDING PAGE
[paste landing page copy]

And on the first try ChatGPT comes up with a pretty good result:

(You can read the full chat here. I did use a slightly different prompt, but it produces similar results.)

Now that gives me a good draft that is already about 80% done. I’ll add the remaining 20% of edits manually to finalize it.

And here’s a sneak peak of the final result of that:

I am pretty happy with it and this saved me a ton of time.

💡 Ideas for other assets where you can use one-shot prompting

So as you can tell, if you plan on using one-shot prompting often, it’s key to start bookmarking good assets that you find and can come back to later.

Especially for digital marketing assets this is very useful. Here are some more ideas this can be useful for:

  1. Newsletter welcome email

  2. Video script

  3. Social media ad

  4. Blog post

  5. Product description page

  6. Social media post

  7. E-book

  8. Sales email

  9. Webinar script

  10. Press release

Having a library with awesome assets and combining that with ChatGPT is now extremely powerful.

Thanks for reading!

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