Your first prompts
How to choose the questions you want to be the answer to, how many to start with, and why your brand name never belongs in one.
A prompt is a question you want to be the answer to. Choosing the first set is the highest-leverage thing you will do in this product, because everything downstream is measured against it.
What you'll learn
- The three tests a good prompt passes
- Why your brand name stays out of the prompt
- How many to start with, and where to find the next ones
Prompts are questions, not keywords
A keyword is a fragment typed into a search box. A prompt is the whole question, asked the way a person asks a colleague. The engine answers it in prose and names a few businesses. That is the event being measured.
| Keyword thinking | Prompt thinking |
|---|---|
| bookkeeper sydney | Who is a good bookkeeper in Sydney for a small construction business? |
| best crm | What CRM should a 10-person agency use? |
| solar installer brisbane | Is it worth installing solar on a Brisbane warehouse, and who does it? |
The three tests
- Would a buyer type it? Say it out loud. If it sounds like a search query rather than a question, rewrite it as a question.
- Does it precede a decision? The prompts that matter are the ones asked while somebody is choosing. A prompt that yields an explainer with no business named in it measures very little. See intent classification.
- Is it answerable? "Best software" is too broad to name anyone specific. Add the buyer, the constraint, or the place.
Your name does not go in the prompt
This is the rule people break first. A prompt containing your brand asks an engine to talk about you, and it will, which tells you nothing about whether you would have been named unprompted. The generic question is the measurement.
Branded questions do have a use, for reputation and for negative mentions, and they are classified separately so they never inflate your competitive picture.
How many to start with
Around fifteen. Every prompt is checked on every surface your plan covers, every cycle, so a prompt that does not map to a decision is coverage you spent for nothing. See coverage and credits.
Cover the spread rather than the volume:
- Two or three buying prompts, the ones asked right before a purchase.
- Two or three comparison prompts, including ones that name your category's usual suspects.
- Two or three local prompts if place matters to your buyers.
- A few informational prompts where you should be the obvious authority.
- One or two branded prompts for reputation.
Where the next ones come from
- Discovery. The platform proposes prompts from your site, your category and the answers it has already read.
- Contested prompts. A prompt where a rival is named and you are not is the best kind of candidate, and the Competitors lens surfaces them.
- Your sales team. The questions they get asked on first calls are prompts, almost verbatim.
Try this in Outercite
Open Prompts, read your list, and delete anything you cannot imagine a buyer asking out loud. Then ask the assistant "Which prompts am I losing, and who is taking them?" and see whether the losses are on prompts you would actually want to win.
Related
Add prompts
The mechanics: adding, grouping into topics, and discovery.
Intent classification
The five intent types, and why the mix matters more than the count.
Prompts
The lens: topics, the grid, and where answers live.
Last updated on
Organisation quickstart
From a new account to a first real answer, then a five-day plan to turn it into a loop you can keep running.
Reading your first answer
What every part of an assistant answer means: the figure in the sentence, the rows in the panel, the basis badges, and the footer that says what was counted.