The best assistants don’t fear AI technology; they leverage it to enhance their capabilities. Surprisingly, the pivotal skill for harnessing AI tools like ChatGPT is one you already possess — effective communication.

The knack for preemptively understanding complex tasks and conveying crucial information is now the cornerstone for AI-empowered executive assistants.

The secret? Crafting the perfect prompts.

Discover how in this article, where you’ll learn the mechanics of AI prompts and explore 50 ready-to-use examples.

Choose to focus on specific prompt categories or delve in from the start to master the art of prompt crafting for executive assistants.

What Is An AI Prompt And How Do They Work?

Prompts are simply you telling the AI what you want it to do.

They range from asking a simple open-ended question (much like you would a person) to giving detailed instructions for specific outcomes.

AI will only be as precise as your prompts.

Imagine a self-driving car. You won’t get where you want to go without inputting a destination. A clear prompt helps the AI take you where you want to go.

The secret ingredient of a great prompt is context.

AI is a machine. It can’t pick up on voice inflection, facial expressions, or non-verbal cues. It can’t read your mind or know your preferences because you hang out together in the break room every day. And it certainly doesn’t mean that the exec you support never uses certain words in an email (or any of a million other particularities).

Part of the context is specificity. AI can still make subtle errors if your prompt isn’t specific and detailed enough. This means your output might take more time to fix than it would have to do it on your own.

Start with introductory work to get AI down the right path. The biggest challenge for AI users might be putting words to their thoughts instead of relying on assumptions.

Specifics might include:

• Output style
• Restricting parameters
• Defining the emotional responses you want from the outcome
• The order you want to list your details in the prompt
• Reading grade level
• … and so on

Consider these two prompts:

“Find a good time for a staff meeting.”

vs.

“Our team prefers morning meetings early in the week. We like to keep the meeting to under 30 minutes and leave a buffer time of at least 20 minutes before and after the meeting. Find an ideal time and place for a meeting for the entire team within the next eight business days that won’t conflict with lunch hour.”

Without context and specificity, you’ll waste a lot of time redoing prompts until you get the right output.

With this in mind, let’s dive into 50 powerful prompts to turn you into an AI-powered executive assistant!

10 AI Prompts For Automated Responses

AI can generate the automated responses you use every day without you having to come up with the language yourself… Over and over…

Out-of-office or Voicemail Responses

Examples:

1. Give me a professional out-of-office email that lets people know I’ll be at a leadership conference. Tell them I will respond to them when I get back.
2. Provide me a funny out-of-office response to let people know I’m on vacation in the Bahamas and am happily ignoring emails until I get back. Provide a subject line and email body.
3. Create a voicemail script that is professional but humorous for [insert your industry]

Customer Support Responses

Though AI and chatbot systems have been in use for customer service for a while, AI can also generate better one-off automated responses than “we received your request and we’ll get back to you.”

It can also help you build a more useful FAQ page, as well as determine where customer feedback is trending.

Examples:

1. Pretend you’re a customer who is frustrated about [product]. What kind of questions would you want answered if you went to a website for help?
2. Act as a customer service professional. The company has just launched [new product] and wants to send a survey to people to find out what they think of it and how they could improve it. Create a survey that would accomplish this with only six questions.
3. Write a calming response to a customer who wants help with [topic].
4. Read through the customer feedback provided and find any patterns. Provide insight on customer concerns, emotions, or potential problems. [customer feedback copy].
5. Provide a plan of feedback for fixing the problems customers have in the following feedback [customer feedback copy].
6. You are an empathetic customer service representative. Reply to a one-star review that a customer left about [product].
7. Create a script for a customer service agent. It is in response to customers who are having a problem with [known common problem]. The script should be focused on understanding the customer and giving the agent options to provide satisfaction to the customer.

8 Prompts To Increase Your Productivity

The more moving pieces you have to manage, the faster time gets away from you. AI can help break goals down into manageable pieces and help you be more productive.

Examples:

1. Recommend communication tools the entire team can use to stay up to date. Some of us have Apple devices, while others use a PC.
2. Using SMART as a guide, break the following goals down into specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals: [paste goal(s)]
3. Set a timer that goes off every 30 minutes.
4. How can I improve my time management skills?
5. What can I do to be more organized at work?
6. Today I have to accomplish [list of items]. Suggest an ideal plan for the day with the most complicated work in the morning, including a one-hour lunch break and finishing by 4:30 pm.
7. My goal for this week is [insert goal]. Break it down into smaller tasks and provide a timeline for getting them done.
8. What are some goals that my team could set each week if we wanted to accomplish [goal] by the end of the year?

6 AI Prompts For Topical Research

You get asked to provide research and quickly turn around data for meetings, reports, or on-the-spot questions. What used to take a long time can be condensed with the right AI prompts.

Examples:

1. Summarize the following article and pull out three key points: [paste article]
2. Summarize this article in 20 words or less: [paste article]
3. What is the latest information on [topic] that would affect how we market [product]
4. What are the newest innovations in the [industry] industry
5. Compare [topic] and [topic] and give me three ways they are similar
6. I need to present information on [topic] for potential clients. Please guide me on what I should include.

Important Note: ChatGPT can’t see anything that’s happened after December 31, 2021. So be advised if you’re researching a specific event in the last couple of years. Thankfully, they haven’t unleashed AI fully into the world, so we shouldn’t have to deal with The Terminator any time soon.

9 AI Prompts For Content Creation

AI can help you create content for social media, marketing, and even blog posts. While it can write all the words for you, we recommend reworking its output with a human touch.

9 AI Prompts For Blog Posts

Some AI users prefer to tell the AI to “act as” a certain kind of entity in order to get a specific kind of return (act as a marketer, act as a storyteller, etc.) That hack can be used with any prompt, not just content creation.

Examples:

1. Generate five clever ideas about time management in headline format. Touch on pain points that people have about wasting time. The target audience is managers.
2. Write a Facebook ad about shoes for people who have low arches and are looking for comfortable dress shoes.
3. How can I improve my writing skills in the next three months?
4. Make the following article more creative: [article] The article should have more humor but be suitable for a fifth-grade level of reading.
5. Write a blog post about recruiting new employees. The target audience is human resource departments. Look at [website URL] for inspiration on style. Use no more than 1200 words. Include these keywords in the post [list of words] and these words [list of words] in the headings. Have no more than three H2 subheadings.
6. Act as a storyteller and create an 800-word article about [topic] using the [keyword] in the body of the article. Make the article humorous with a surprise ending.
7. Write a marketing statement for [name of company], which is [description of company]. (You could use a similar prompt for a mission statement, etc.)
8. What are the top five trends in the [industry] industry?
9. Write five clever tweets on [topic] that will get them to reply.

You can even paste your top-performing posts to mimic or match in style, as well as flesh out a more specific target audience or even keywords and SEO considerations.

Important Note: AI has a habit of plagiarism. That’s why it’s important to revise, add your own angles, spice it up with stories, and use other contexts. Just to be safe, you can use tools like this plagiarism checker.

6 AI Prompts For SEO

SEO is an ever-changing combo of art and science. However, the right prompts and keyword combinations simplify the process.

Examples:

1. Find 15 keywords associated with [topic].
2. Generate five questions people have about [topic].
3. Create a list of ten keywords based on the following paragraph. Rank them in descending order. [general content, event, or product description].
4. Create five blog post titles based on this list of keywords: [list].
5. Create five blog post titles using keyword [keyword] that targets [specific audience].
6. What are the top five searches in Google for the past month on [topic]?

6 AI Prompts To Generate Professional Documents Or Materials

AI can help create resumes, job descriptions, and even hiring questions to use in an interview.

Examples:

1. Acting as an interviewer only, asking one question at a time, interview me for a job with the following description [description here].
2. Write a 100-word job description that summarizes the following list of requirements and expectations: [list of job requirements].
3. Create a job description for [title of job] that makes it sound fun and would attract applicants in [location] but don’t use the words [list of banned words]: [current job description].
4. Generate a list of 25 questions to ask a potential employee for a job with the following description [description here]. Make sure the questions use inclusive language.
5. Create an outline that provides three key leadership qualities for [position] and the steps necessary to achieve them. Provide a basic plan that would be necessary to create a training program with those leadership principles in mind. This training will last five hours.
6. Write a letter of acceptance for a job offer we extended for [position] at [company name]
7. What kinds of information should I have ready when I meet with our head of marketing this week? I want to impress her.

4 AI Prompts To Create Graphics And Images

Today, this is one of the weakest areas of AI output for professional use. However, it will likely leapfrog itself in the coming years (or even months). So, it’s worth an honorable mention!

You can create blog post images, social media graphics, and graphic design materials using AI like DALL•E•2. (Just prepare yourself for some occasional surrealism.)

The key is to be very specific about what you want, the setting, the style—even the emotional response you want from viewers.

Prompt examples (and these are very basic):

1. Create an image of a castle on top of a cliff in the style of Monet.
2. Generate an image of a computer on a desk of a busy person, highly detailed, dramatic lighting, 3D render.
3. Small town main street with large trees, a peaceful setting, soft lighting, and digital art.
4. Create a professional logo for a leadership conference, using blue colors, evoking high energy and happiness.