ChatGPT’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) has brought about a revolution in many sectors. Its ability to write all kinds of texts, from a simple tweet or an email, to a software program or an entire project plan, has made many see it as a magic solution for everything.
But be careful, because all that glitters is not gold. If you have started to take your first steps with ChatGPT, you will have noticed that sometimes their answers are not exactly like jumping for joy.
10 basic tips and tricks to make the most of the potential of ChatGPT
If we use ChatGPT just “to see what comes out” we will probably be disappointed. Therefore, to get the most out of it, it is important that we first learn to use the basic prompts .
Once we are clear about everything we can do with this tool, the next step will be to learn to communicate with it and use methods that allow us to extract better results . Let’s start!
1- Ask for more words than you need for your text
If you want ChatGPT to write content that meets your needs, it is essential that you expressly indicate the length that the text should have. If you want me to do a book summary, maybe 300 words will be enough, but if you need an elaborate essay then you will need a response of at least 1,000 words.
Don’t be afraid to be specific, and always ask for more words than you need , as it’s always easier to cut content than add it yourself later.
2- Train it so that it learns to imitate your way of writing
If you don’t like ChatGPT’s writing style, remember that you can teach it to imitate your style. Provide them with some text that you have written (the longer the better) and ask them to analyze it so they are familiar with the style of writing you want to use.
3- Ask him to continue and extend his answer
Don’t settle for the first answer from ChatGPT. If you want more information, ask him to develop his answer further , or to expand on a specific section of his speech.
This will allow you to gain a deeper understanding of the subject you are discussing, and will help you prepare more detailed texts.
4- If you don’t like a text, ask ChatGPT to reformulate your answer
Of course, if an answer from ChatGPT doesn’t convince you, don’t be afraid to ask him to try again and come up with a new answer. To do this, you can tell him to write the answer in a different way.
5- Use keywords
When detailing your requests, do not forget to include all the relevant keywords for the text you want to generate. This will help the AI to write content in relation to those keywords, which can be very useful if we are looking for specific information on a certain topic.
6- The simpler, the better
Avoid complex language and overly elaborate or long sentences . You are not in a book club or a poetry and literature class. Don’t forget that you are talking to a robot, and what it needs is that you transmit the orders in the simplest way possible so that it can understand them without problems. Otherwise, it may get confused and give you less accurate answers.
As a guide, below you can find some prompts or example instructions classified into different topics:
- The 50 Best ChatGPT Prompts for Content Creators
- Top 50 ChatGPT Prompts for Students
- 40 Best ChatGPT Prompts for Developers
- The 70 Best ChatGPT Prompts for Marketers
7- ChatGPT still has its limitations
ChatGPT is a language model, and while it can emulate human behavior to some extent, it also has its technical limitations. The most important are the “hallucinations” suffered by the AI, which sometimes causes it to respond with false information, half truths or directly invented things.
On top of that, right now the free ChatGPT model is not connected to the internet, and is only trained on data prior to September 2021 . Anything that happened after that date is simply unknown to the AI. Keep this in mind when you go to ask a certain question.
8- The AI is better at making drafts than writing the final content
Think of ChatGPT as a help tool or assistant, rather than a substitute for your work. If you expect it to deliver polished and “definitive” texts, you will probably end up frustrated.
Instead, ChatGPT’s AI is very good at giving ideas, creating lines of writing, facilitating outlines and drafts. Of course, later you will have to enrich and extend them with your own knowledge and skills, but it will certainly help you to be more productive.
9- Your requests must be clear and concise
The more vague and imprecise your “prompts” or instructions are, the worse the responses and content generated by ChatGPT will also be. Remember that it is a conversational chat, so unless you are very specific the AI response will be short and full of generalities.
To get an answer that lives up to your expectations, make sure that you explain to the smallest detail what you want to obtain . Writing a detailed petition can be laborious and time-consuming, but the resulting content will be of much better quality.
10- Always check all the content
As we said, sometimes ChatGPT hallucinates and provides incorrect data. In addition, it can also generate duplicate content , or write phrases that are too “robotic” or artificial.