How to Write ‘Multi-Shot’ Prompts for ChatGPT (with checklist)

In our last tutorial, we explored few-shot prompts, where providing one or two examples helped ChatGPT replicate your style or tone. But what happens when your task requires even more nuance or consistency? This is where multi-shot prompts come in, offering greater control by using multiple examples to guide ChatGPT’s responses.

I recently used multi-shot prompts to prepare a customer onboarding email sequence for a product launch. Each email needed a different tone—professional yet approachable—depending on its purpose: welcoming, educating, or upselling. By providing ChatGPT with several examples for each tone, I achieved results that were cohesive and perfectly tailored.

What Are Multi-Shot Prompts?

Multi-shot prompts are ideal when you want ChatGPT to master a concept, tone, or style by exposing it to multiple examples, ensuring consistency across your results.

They provide ChatGPT with several examples to teach it about tone, format, or approach. By offering a broader range of input, you can help it handle nuanced tasks or maintain consistency across complex projects.

Definition: Multi-shot prompts allow for deeper customization by showing ChatGPT more than one way to meet your needs.

Analogy

Think of multi-shot prompts as teaching a recipe. One example might show someone how to bake cookies, but multiple examples—like brownies and muffins—help them understand broader baking techniques. The same concept applies here: more examples provide better context for ChatGPT to deliver refined results.

Examples of Multi-Shot Prompts

1. Consistent Tone Across Emails

• Prompt: “Here are three examples of welcome emails in a friendly tone. Use these to write a new welcome email for our product, emphasizing ease of use and customer support.”
• Why It Works: ChatGPT can identify common elements in your examples, like word choice or sentence structure, and replicate them in new outputs.

2. Complex Document Summaries

• Prompt: “Summarize this document in bullet points. Here are examples of summaries I’ve liked:
  1. Focus on challenges, solutions, and outcomes.
  2. Use concise, clear language.
• Why It Works: By offering more than one template for the format, you ensure consistent and tailored summaries.

3. Tailored Social Media Posts

• Prompt: “Here are three Instagram captions promoting our eco-friendly products. Write five new captions using a similar tone and format.”
• Why It Works: Multiple examples allow ChatGPT to learn your brand’s voice more effectively.

4. Training AI for Tone Consistency Across Blogs

• Prompt: “Here are three blog post conclusions about marketing strategies. Write a conclusion for our new blog post on social media engagement in a similar style.”
• Why It Works: Helps maintain brand consistency across long-form content.

5. Customer FAQs

• Prompt: “Here are three examples of answers to customer questions. Write answers to these new questions, matching the tone and structure of the examples.”
• Why It Works: Useful for customer support documentation or chatbot scripts.

Use Cases for Multi-Shot Prompts

1. Marketing Campaigns

• Example Prompt: “Create a three-email sequence promoting our software. Here are examples of a welcome email, an upsell email, and a follow-up email.”
• Benefit: Ensures the tone and style remain cohesive across the campaign.

2. Long-Form Content Creation

• Example Prompt: “Here are examples of engaging introductions for technical articles for a B2C magazine posts. Use these to write an intro for our new article on API monetization.”
• Benefit: Helps produce intros, conclusions, or even full articles that align with a preferred structure or tone.

3. Training and Support Documentation

• Example Prompt: “Here are examples of user guides for similar products. Write a guide for this product in the same style. Use the Microsoft Style Guide for Technical Publications as a reference.”
• Benefit: Produces clear and user-friendly documentation.

4. Project Management

• Example Prompt: “Here are three examples of project status updates written for stakeholders. Write a similar update for our Q4 progress.”
• Benefit: Ensures clarity and professionalism in recurring updates.

5. Education

• Example Prompt: “Here are three examples of learning objectives for a technical course. Write learning objectives for a course on AI basics.”
• Benefit: Creates structured and consistent learning materials.

Klariti Checklist for Writing Multi-Shot Prompts

1. Provide Multiple Relevant Examples
   Bad: “Here’s one email I like. Write another.”
   Good: “Here are three emails I like, each with a different purpose: welcome, follow-up, and upsell. Write another in this sequence.”
2. Be Explicit About Patterns or Features
   Bad: “Make it like these examples.”
   Good: “Replicate the conversational tone and concise format used in these examples.”
3. Use Diverse Examples for Broad Tasks
   Bad: “Here’s one example of a formal email.”
   Good: “Here are examples of formal, semi-formal, and casual emails. Write a semi-formal email using this tone.”
4. Refine the Results Through Iteration
   Example: “This is close, but use shorter sentences like in the first example.”
5. Provide Feedback on Results
   Example: “Add more warmth to the response, like in Example 3.”
6. Use Contrast for Nuanced Tasks
   Example: “Show examples with contrasting tones. For instance, include a professional email and a casual email if the task requires a tone shift.”
7. Test with Variations
   Example: “Provide slight variations of the same example (e.g., email closings) to give ChatGPT more data to learn from.”

Challenge: Try a Multi-Shot Prompt

Think of a task where consistency or nuance is essential, such as writing emails or social media captions. Create a multi-shot prompt like this:

“Here are three captions for our eco-friendly brand. Write five more using this tone and style, focusing on sustainability and ease of use.”

Refine the results as needed to achieve the perfect output.

What’s Next? Advanced Role-Based Prompts

Now that you’ve explored multi-shot prompts, it’s time to learn how to make ChatGPT take on a role, such as a project manager, marketer, or editor. In the next tutorial, we’ll look at role-based prompts, where ChatGPT adapts its output based on the persona you assign it.