If You’re Not Using ChatGPT Like This, You’re Wasting Time

Now, when it comes to prompting, most people barely scratch the surface because they don't know how to prompt properly. I didn't. I had to do a lot of studying and research to learn what I know now. Bad prompts get bad results. So, in this video, I'm going to show you how to use Chad GPT much more powerfully, especially as a solo entrepreneur. So, I'm going to walk you through three levels of prompting and help you level up your prompting skills.

Starting with simple basic prompts that you've probably already used and ending up with some advanced techniques that not many people are using that will get you truly amazing results for you and your business. Since this channel was created to help photographers develop their business, my examples are going to be related to photography. But you can tailor everything you see in this video to your own business as well because I'm showing you techniques and systems not specific to my industry.

Everything I'm covering in this video can be done using the free versions of Chad GPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity with some daily usage limitations or in the paid versions of all of those and Anthropic Cloud.

Okay, so let's start with level one, basic prompting. This is where almost everyone starts when they first use AI. You type in a simple oneline request and hope it gives you something useful, something like write a marketing plan for a photography business or give me tips for getting more photography clients. Now, this is a fine place to start. We all start here. It's quick and easy. But there's a big problem.

These prompts are just way too vague. When you don't give clear instructions, the AI fills in the blanks however it wants. And that usually leads to generic, very surface level advice that's not very helpful for your business. Now, if you stay at level one, you're leaving a lot of value on the table. But it doesn't take much to upgrade your results. Even a little more specificity makes a huge difference.

Instead of just saying, "Write a marketing plan for a photography business," you could say, "Write a marketing plan for a luxury wedding photographer targeting high net worth clients in, let's say, Austin, Texas." Now, the AI knows what type of photography you do, who you're targeting, and where you're located. So, that's a bit more context, right? And that leads to advice that's more actionable and more realistic.

So, your first takeaway should be this. If you give Chad GBT more details, you get more valuable results. So, it's the first step towards better prompting. And the better you prompt, the better the results you get. And also, just to be clear, I don't run a luxury wedding photography business in Austin. I don't even live in Austin. I live in Canada where I shoot a lot of corporate and commercial photography for clients here in Canada.

I'm just using this as an example. And you'll obviously want to tailor this to your own business, whatever that is, wherever it is. Now, let's move up to level two, structured prompting. And this is where things start getting serious. At level two, you stop merely asking questions and you start giving detailed instructions. Now, this is where the prompt engineering begins and we start to use a more rigid prompt structure.

The best practices for a current LLM such as Chad GPT look like this. It has four parts. The goal, the return format, the warnings, and the context. So, first, you want to clearly define the goal, what you actually want the AI to do for you. For example, you might write, create a 90-day marketing strategy for a wedding photography studio. Second, you're going to specify the return format, which is how you want the information to be organized and returned to you, like a bullet list, uh a table, or a formal article.

Now, for this example, we might want a bulletoint action plan divided into 3 months. So, third, you're going to give the AI warnings. Now, these are clear boundaries, so it avoids things that you don't want, like making up statistics or suggesting outdated strategies. For example, we're going to write no generic advice like just post on Instagram. suggest specific tactics like partnerships with local businesses, SEO blog topics, and setting up an email list.

And fourth, and finally, you're going to provide context, information about your business, your audience, your style, and anything else that helps it make better decisions. Sticking with our luxury photography example, I'm going to put I own a modern luxury wedding photography studio in Austin, Texas, targeting high- netw worth couples and luxury wedding event planners. So, here's our new fully structured prompt.

Goal: Create a 90-day marketing strategy for a luxury wedding photography studio. The return format is a bullet point action plan divided into three months. Warnings, no generic advice like just post on Instagram, suggest specific tactics like partnerships with local businesses, SEO blog topics, and setting up an email list. And context, I own a modern luxury wedding photography studio in Austin, Texas, targeting high net worth couples and luxury wedding event planners.

Okay, so now instead of a generic list, the AI gives you a real marketing plan that's built for your real business and your real clients. It's customtailored to you. You can also start using this prompt structure for SEO work. So, for example, goal, create an SEO content calendar for a luxury wedding photography business website. Return format, table format with columns for month, blog title, target keyword, and search intent.

Warnings: Only suggest keywords with commercial or transactional intent. Avoid low traffic or informational only phrases. In the context, I specialize in luxury wedding photography in Austin, Texas, and I want to target high netw worth clients who are ready to book services. So now you can see that chat GPT is working like a professional content strategist. Using prompt structures forces you to think more clearly about what it is that you need and it also tells ChatGpt to think more clearly, too.

It's like writing a creative brief for a content planner that you might hire. The more contacts that you specify, the better they will perform, the better results that you'll get. Okay? So, I want to take a moment to stress this. If you can afford to hire an expert to do this for you, hire an expert. Otherwise, this is the next best thing for people like me who cannot afford to hire someone to do this work, but who still need to do this work in their business, but lack the expertise to do so at a truly competent and competitive level.

Just because I don't know how to do this stuff myself and I don't have the time or the financing to learn to do it myself or to hire someone to do it doesn't mean that my business deserves to fail. Right? I have a functioning business but I need to stay competitive in what I do. Okay. So now let's move to level three and I'm going to call this uh knowledgebased prompting. So this is where you go far beyond just asking chat GPT for answers where you treat it like a real research assistant or a junior strategist.

At this level, your first job is to create your own knowledge base which you'll use to train the AI how to think at the level that your brand requires. You still follow structured prompting, setting a goal, return format, warnings, and context. But now you're first going to build a foundation. Now you do that by creating deep research guides. These are going to be professional-grade documents that establish the standards, the strategies, and principles uh that your business operates by.

To create these reports, I'm going to use Chat GPT's deep research functionality.

Okay, so let me give you some real examples. If I want to dominate SEO for my luxury wedding photography brand, I don't just start asking for blog topics. First, I need to create my knowledge base. I've already done this by getting ChatGpt to create some research guides using its deep research capabilities. These are the three guides that I've created and you could create each of these guides using the structured prompt template that uh I discussed earlier.

Okay. So, first let's create a brand development blueprint called building an ultra luxury wedding photography brand. Right. This guide defines what luxury truly means, who my audience is, how to position my brand, and how to design a service experience that feels rare, refined, and truly elite. The final prompt might look like this. Uh goal uh create a comprehensive strategic guide titled building an ultra luxury wedding photography brand return format strategic brand development document divided into sections defining luxury versus premium audience demographics and psychoraphics brand positioning service design you know white glove experiences brand voice and aesthetics and marketing channels for ultra luxury clients warnings do not use generic general branding advice focus specifically on best practices for targeting ultra high netw worth individuals with references to privacy, exclusivity, and bespoke service.

Context: I'm developing a luxury wedding photography brand in Austin, Texas, targeting weddings with budgets over $100,000 and clients expecting extreme personalization, discretion, and craftsmanship. So, Chat DPT will spend uh some time creating the report. This report took me about 45 minutes. Now, when it's done, copy it to Google Docs, format it if you wish, then export the report as a PDF, and just save it to your computer.

We're going to use that PDF in our next prompt. So, next, let's create a guide called Content That Converts, a strategic guide for luxury wedding photographers. Now, this guide breaks down emotional storytelling, persuasive calls to action, blog content structures, and SEO driven writing, all customized to high-end service businesses. It's not a collection of random tips. It's strategic, intentional, and specific to your business and your market.

Right? So, here's a structured deep research prompt for that guide. Goal: Create a comprehensive research report titled content that converts a strategic guide for luxury wedding photographers. Return format, formal white paper style report with sections on emotional storytelling, persuasive calls to action, uh, blog content structure, and SEO best practices for service businesses. Warnings, no general advice.

Focus specifically on strategies proven to increase lead generation and client engagement for luxury service providers. And then context. This research guide will be used as internal training for marketing my luxury wedding photography brand targeting ultra high net worth clients in Austin, Texas. Use the attached PDF for further context. And that attached PDF is the luxury brand guide that you just created and saved to your computer.

So now you can start to see how powerful this approach to prompting becomes because you're creating really wellressearched reports and using those knowledge guides in your subsequent prompts. So when chat GPT returns the second report, you're going to repeat the process of saving it to Google Docs and exporting it as a PDF. We're going to use both of these guides as a knowledge base when creating the prompt for our final guide.

So next I create another guide called SEO best practices for luxury wedding photographers. Now, this manual covers keyword research, technical SEO, image optimization, content creation, and local SEO, but again, tailored for photographers targeting ultra high netw worth clients, not just anyone. So, the prompt for this guide looks like this. Goal: Create a detailed research report titled SEO best practices for luxury wedding photographers.

The return format, professional manual divided into sections, keyword research, technical SEO, image optimization, content SEO, local SEO, link building, and analytics tracking. Each section should include practical steps and modern examples for photographers. Warnings: Do not recommend outdated SEO practices like keyword stuffing or excessive backlinks. Follow only white hat sustainable SEO guidelines. the context.

This guide will serve as the SEO strategy blueprint for a luxury wedding photographer specializing in ultra-igh net worth weddings in Austin, Texas. Use the attached PDFs for further context. And also, I'm going to take a moment to say like if you are looking for a detailed SEO guide, I've created one called the ultimate SEO guide for photographers that you can get by clicking the link in the description or the QR code on the screen.

That's a downloadable PDF. So, you can take that PDF and use that in your prompts as a as a fantastic guide to help create and structure SEO for your website when you're working on using chat GPT for SEO. You can even just use the guide without Chat GPT. Just go through the guide and it will tell you exactly what you need to do for your website. But if you use the guide with chat GPT to create a prompt that's specific to your website and your business, it will tell you exactly the things that you should do to help improve your SEO on your website and and rank much higher.

Okay, so getting back to ChatGpt, we're we're again going to wait for ChatGpt to create the guide, copy it to Google Docs, and export that guide as a PDF. So now we have three large deep research reports that will act as guides when creating our content calendar, our deep understanding of the luxury wedding photography market, best SEO practices for that market, and a content strategy document specific to that market.

So now when I prompt the AI to build an SEO content calendar or design a luxury brand campaign, it's not guessing anymore. It's pulling from a deep customized research knowledge base built specifically for that brand for for this luxury wedding photography brand in this example. So this is the real secret to getting expert level work out of Chad GPT. You train it first then prompted and it's not just about creating random reports and guides either at this level.

You're also following best practices. You provide examples. You design clear simple instructions. You define exactly what kind of outputs you want like tables, charts, summaries, reports, strategic frameworks. You give instructions instead of just saying don't do this or don't do that. You manage the length so that the AI stays focused and you continually refine your prompts based on results. So when you work this way, you move from getting good ideas to building entire marketing systems, SEO frameworks, brand strategies, and client acquisition pipelines that are specific to your business and your clients.

All with AI doing the heavy lifting trained on a knowledge base specific to your own needs. So, that's what knowledgebased prompting is all about. And it's not just better prompt. It's building a system that helps your specific business. If you can master this approach to using chat GPT, you'll have a major advantage over everyone else because you're not just prompting it. You're partnering with it strategically.

Now, if you really want to take this to the next level, you can create your own private custom GPTs specifically for your business and create projects in chat GPT and Claude and Gems in Google Gemini spaces in Perplexity. upload all of your guides there and and create a custom GPT that's specific to your business and your needs. Now, if you don't understand what it is to put into a prompt to like get this the specific report, just zoom out, ask chat GPT what a standard report might look like and then ask it to create a prompt that will help you create a report for this specific type of business.

Then you have the prompt that you can give it. you have a deep research prompt that you can just give right back to it using the deep research function. You can ask it who the experts in that field are and then you can say build a report based on the advice from these experts. So just zoom out when you're having problems where you're feeling stuck zoom out and then just say what is it that I need to know?

What is it that I don't understand and how can I ask chat GPT to give me this knowledge so that I can give it back to the system and provide a better result. If you found this video helpful please give it a thumbs up. that really helps me. And if you have any tips or pointers, share them in the comments for everyone to read. I know I'm always open to new ways to improve any skills that could help my business grow. [Music]