How to write great prompts (our 3-step system) 🎯

Hello everybody, welcome back to Moodboard 🌴

It’s been a wild, wonderful week.

My wife gave birth to our first child on Sunday morning, and we’re just getting settled back at home. Mom and baby are both happy and healthy, and there’s a lot to be grateful for.

At times like this (when I’m trying to spend every possible moment with my family), one of the small things I’m grateful for is the systems that we’ve built.

I used our voice memo → newsletter workflow to write today’s newsletter while baby was napping for 30 minutes, so we’ll call that a win 🙏 

Over the last 35 weeks of writing Moodboard, I've shared a ton of those kinds of prompts and workflows.

Today, I want to pull back the curtain and show you how we actually build some of our prompts.

It's a straightforward 3-step system: Start Simple, Iterate, Templatize.

(This framework is the first of six vibe marketing strategies we teach in the very first session of our Vibe Marketer OS program)

Let's check it out 👇

Two Mistakes to Avoid

When it comes to prompting, people usually fall into one of two traps:

Trap #1: They start simple, iterate, but never save their work.

They'll prompt something basic, get a rough output, doctor it with feedback over a few rounds, and eventually land on something pretty good. But then they close the chat and lose all of that context.

Next time they need the same thing they either go back and search for that context-rich chat, or they just start from scratch.

Trap #2: They try to get too detailed upfront.

They spend 20 minutes crafting the "perfect" prompt before they even see an output. Then when the result isn't quite right, they're frustrated. They already put in all this effort and it still doesn't match what they wanted.

The truth is, you can't anticipate everything upfront. You don't know what feedback you'll want to give until you see something to react to.

Our 3-step system covers all the bases.

Start simple (so you're not overthinking upfront), iterate (so you get exactly what you want), and templatize (so you never lose that work).

The 3-Step System: Start Simple, Iterate, Templatize

Step 1: Start Simple

Don't overthink your first prompt, just get something on the page.

If I wanted to create a newsletter in Claude (and I didn’t already have a prompt saved from the Moodboard Prompt Database 😎), I might start with something as basic as:

"Help me write a 500-word newsletter about AI for marketing."

The first output is going to be rough (that's fine, it's supposed to be).

Step 2: Iterate

Instead of trying to think of every detail upfront, I "doctor" the output with step-by-step feedback.

Maybe things like:

• "Let's structure this with defined sections: an intro, 3 main points, and a CTA at the end."

• "Make the intro more conversational. Start with a hook, not a summary."

• "Cut the corporate jargon. This should sound like I'm talking to a friend."

• "Add a specific example in section two."

Each piece of feedback gets me closer to what I'm looking for, and this works way better than trying to write the "perfect prompt” upfront.

Think about it. It's kind of exactly how you'd train a junior marketer or editor. 

You’re not necessarily handing them a 47-point style guide on day one. You review their work, give feedback, they adjust, you give more feedback. Over time, they learn exactly what you're looking for.

This is a similar process, we’re just running through it with Claude.

After 4-5 rounds of iteration, you should have something that is much closer to what you were initially looking for.

Step 3: Templatize

Once you've iterated your way to a great output, it's time to capture everything you learned in a reusable prompt.

This can be as simple as asking:

"Great, now take all of that feedback and instruction I gave you and create a templatized prompt. All I should have to do is pass it a subject or some initial notes, and it should produce a newsletter that looks like this final version."

Claude will synthesize all of your iterative feedback into one comprehensive prompt that you can use again and again.

The Power of ✨ Meta-Prompting ✨

We call this process meta-prompting. You're using AI to help you create better AI prompts. 

It may sound meta (because it is) or lazy (because it is), but it's the most natural way I've found to build prompts that actually capture your voice and preferences.

The iterative approach lets you leverage your biggest asset: your taste, knowledge, and feedback.

You don't need to be a "prompt engineer." You just need to know what good looks like for your work, and be willing to give feedback until you get there.

The templatization step captures all of that knowledge so you don't have to search through old chats or repeat the iteration step every time.

Build it once, use it a hundred times, pass it to teammates/clients, and update when necessary.