Marisa Shadrick [00:00:00]:
Most people that wanna create content using AI are looking for prompts. They’re trying to figure out what the best prompt is to use with ChatGPT so they can get their writing done faster. But here’s what I’ve discovered drives better results. It’s not the prompt, it’s what precedes the prompt, and that is the context. So in this episode, we’re gonna flip the script, and we’re gonna talk a little bit about context. And you’re gonna discover a more human friendly, story based approach to working with AI to create your content. Stay tuned. Hello, and welcome to this episode.

Marisa Shadrick [00:00:43]:
Today, we’re gonna talk about how to generate content using AI and what the best approach is so that your output is much better than what you’ve been getting, which means less edits and you’ll be able to be more efficient with your time. But first, let me ask you something. Have you ever overcomplicated something that was actually very simple once you understood how it worked? I think maybe we all have. I know a few years back, I bought an Instant Pot. I call it Instant Pot, but it’s an Instant Pot during a Black Friday sale. Now, apparently, everyone was using them, so I thought that I should probably be that person that cooks more efficiently, and so I got one. It came in this big box, and it was packaged well. And you could see on the front, it had a picture.

Marisa Shadrick [00:01:33]:
It had lots of buttons. And it when I opened it up, it had warnings about pressure valves that I didn’t understand, an instruction manual that made you question your intelligence. Well, I looked at it, and although I wanted to use it here’s my confession. I was afraid to use it because I thought the pressure cooker was gonna blow up in my face. I thought it was going to explode or something, and so I I didn’t use it. I moved that thing twice to two different states and never used it. Fast forward three years, once I moved to Tennessee, I decided since I brought it to this state, I was gonna go ahead and use it. So I plugged it in.

Marisa Shadrick [00:02:13]:
I hit pressure cook. I set the time, and guess what? It worked. It was easy. It was simple. No explosion. Just quick and easy juicy chicken in minutes. And the kicker was the chicken was frozen when I put it in. It was a game changer, and I use it all the time now.

Marisa Shadrick [00:02:31]:
Kind of the same way for people that are looking at ChatGPT. They overcomplicate and think this is just gonna be too scary. The output’s gonna be horrible, and they overthink it when really it can be very, very simple. So let me go over a few little teaching points. The first one is why prompting alone isn’t enough. Prompting is only part of the equation. What precedes the prompt is context. Let me give you an example.

Marisa Shadrick [00:02:58]:
When I ask my husband to do me a favor and, let’s say, grab something from the store, and I give him instructions as far as what it is that I need, and then I leave out the tiny details, right, about what I need. He goes to the store. He sees all kinds of choices and options, and then when he comes back, he’ll bring the wrong thing. And, of course, his response to me is, Marissa, I can’t read your mind, which is so true. If I could be more detailed or snap a picture of something that I need, it would make it much easier. Well, it’s the same thing with chat GBT. It can’t read your mind. We have to give it very explicit instructions, context, so that it understands what we’re trying to do because it has no clue.

Marisa Shadrick [00:03:43]:
AI is only as smart as the context is given. The prompt is the ask. It’s the command. It’s what you’re wanting it to do, but it can’t do something without the context. Context is the conversation or the scenario of the situation. Here’s point number two. Have you ever been taken out of context? You can see the importance of context. I laugh because I’ve done this.

Marisa Shadrick [00:04:09]:
If somebody only hears part of a conversation or if they misread a text message and they take something out of context, it can be disastrous. And you don’t even realize it was taken out of context until you’re not invited to the family barbecue. Then you realize somebody misinterpreted something because of context. So you can see why context is so important. And that’s what happens when you give ChatGPT a prompt without context or explaining the scenario. You give it too much room to fill in the blanks, and that’s when it begins to hallucinate. Hallucinate simply means it fills in the blank with whatever it can find. It’s not really aligned with your brand or with who you are or what you do.

Marisa Shadrick [00:04:53]:
It’s just trying to fill in the blanks, because it’s trying to please you. And sometimes it’s hilarious, sometimes it’s just wrong, and other times it leaves a big old editing mess for you to clean up. And it’s not because AI is ineffective, but we left it to guess, and we don’t want to do that. So here’s what I want you to walk away with. I want to introduce a simple method. It’s an acronym called context, and with each letter, I’m going to give you a method to be able to make sure that you give it the context it needs. So, obviously, this word has seven letters, and so there’s seven parts to this method. But once you remember it, you’ll just think, oh, context.

Marisa Shadrick [00:05:37]:
Do I have all these pieces in here when I’m giving it the scenario before I give it the prompt or the actual do this for me? So here we go. The first one is the c in context, and that is clarity on AI’s role. What do you want AI to be? You don’t want it to act like something. You want it to be someone. So you tell it, what do I want ChatGPT to be? Do I want it to be a strategist? Do I want it to be a writer? Do I want it to be an analyst? Do I want it to be an editor? What is the role? So that is the c, clarity on AI’s role. The o in context is objective of the content. What is the goal? So when I think of objective of the content, what is the objective? What is the premise? What is the purpose of this piece of content? Is it to educate? Is it to inspire? Is it to convert? Is it to entertain? So you want to give it a clear objective so it says, okay. I understand what we’re trying to achieve with this piece of content.

Marisa Shadrick [00:06:44]:
The n in context is niche or audience. We want to make sure we tell it, give it the context or the scenario of who this is for. Is it for a certain level? For example, a beginner, intermediate, advanced level. Is it addressing certain pain points or certain interests? So explain as much about the audience. And if you have an audience profile already created, you can simply upload that document to ChatGPT so it understands the audience, and it will help you with the output so it aligns well for that audience. The t in context is topic and point of view. So what is the subject? What is the topic? And what is your point of view? What is the take or your belief on this? And that’s what you wanna provide for it. And notice, we’re not asking it to do anything yet.

Marisa Shadrick [00:07:39]:
We’re just giving it context. The e is for expertise, brand, and research. Now here’s where we can be a little bit more tactical if we want to, if we’re writing something that’s how to, and we can explain and go deeper with the tactical portion of your point of view, or you can give it a little bit more of the business knowledge or maybe a case study. Or even if you need more research done, here is where you can ask it to research this topic and to cite the website where it got the information so you can review it yourself and see if you wanna use that and reference that website for that research that was done. The x in context is expression. Expression of style and format. You want to be able to upload samples of your voice, your tone, the way that you communicate, the language that you use, the formatting that you use, how do you format things, whatever the output is, whether it’s a blog post or a social post. What’s the format? And give it examples so it will understand the format.

Marisa Shadrick [00:08:47]:
So the expression of style is what really begins to shape this into something that sounds like you. The last one, the t in context, is terms and constraints. So are there certain terms you don’t want it to use? Is there jargon words that you wanna eliminate? Are there certain AI giveaways that you wanna make sure it doesn’t include, like unleash or unpack? Are there constraints? Is there something that you do not want it to do? Like, for example, do not use emojis, because it can go emoji crazy if you let it. So there could be some constraints. It’s the do’s and the don’ts, the rules that it needs to follow. And perhaps it could be a word count not to exceed a certain word count. So all of those things creates the boundaries for it, so the output is better. Context turns AI into an intern or a partner in the creative process.

Marisa Shadrick [00:09:46]:
So let me go over the context method very quickly. The c stands for clarity on AI’s role, the o, objective of the content, the n, the niche or audience, the t for the topic and point of view, the e, the expertise, brand, the research, the x is eXpression, style, and format, and the t is the terms, conditions, or you can consider the rules, the do’s and the don’ts. If you give it a little bit of this context method, your output is gonna be much, much better. Then when you do say, now I want you to and you ask it to produce something, it will have all the information that it needs to be able to produce better output. Once again, think of the prompt as the ask, but that is the second step. The first step is the context, which is the instruction or the scenario of the situation. So it understands and it continues to learn what it is that you want. Context helps ChatGPT, or any AI for that matter, make sense of the request or what you’re asking it to do.

Marisa Shadrick [00:11:01]:
Otherwise, it doesn’t know, and it will try to pull from anywhere just to make you happy. When you give AI your brain, your brand, your voice, it gives you back content that feels like it came from you. That’s the power of context. I hope you found this episode helpful, and it will give you a little bit more confidence when using an AI tool to generate content. And if you enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you would leave a five star rating and a review so I can get this out to more people. Until next time, take care. Bye bye.