I vividly remember how I felt waking up on December 1, 2022—the day after ChatGPT was released to the public. Sure, I had a little (lot) of panic for the future of my career as a copywriter. But that ultimately fueled a determination to learn to make this tool work for me, rather than instead of me.
Two years (what!?) and thousands of prompts later, and I’ve settled on a few prompting frameworks that have proven to deliver the best results from AI.*
So if you’re a copywriter looking to beat that writer’s block or a non-writer who needs some help getting content started, here are three AI frameworks that will work for you.
#1 The AI Like a Human Framework.
This framework is great for when you have a vision of your final result, but for whatever reason are struggling to get past the blank page. Depending on how many prompt cycles you go through before moving on to your own edit, this process can be quicker than the other two I’ll present today.
We’ve actually talked a lot about this simple, yet effective, prompting process. You can see the infographic of this process here or watch one of our content strategists walk through it here.
Here’s a brief breakdown in case you don’t want to click out:
#2 The Trust Insights PARE AI Framework.
The next step up in complexity is the Trust Insights PARE AI framework. Here, we take a lot of the same thinking used in the previous framework, but add three steps: the prime, refresh, and evaluate steps below:
This is a great option if you have a little more time and especially if you have a little less predetermined vision for the final product. It’s a great option if you aren’t a copywriter and find yourself in need of some solid copy.
#3 The PARE AI PLUS Framework.
Here’s where things get beefy. If you are not in a hurry and in need of the most spectacular content AI is capable of generating, this monster of a prompting framework is for you.
I’m going to take you through each step and provide sample prompts, but here’s the basic idea of this model:
Now let’s get nerdy about each step, because this model is the most complex—and comprehensive—of the three.
BIG TIP: You’ll notice a lot of repetition between prompts and might be tempted to shortcut by saying things like, “based on the previous prompt.” Don’t do that. AI tools like ChatGPT 4o can technically remember things from previous prompts and across various conversations, but this is extremely inconsistent and they get confused easily. I’ve found the best results by being incredibly specific about what I want the tool to reference and do in each and every prompt.
Note: Plug in your own info where you find bold text. Italicized text is not part of the prompt itself, but references documents you need to create or attach.
1: Prep the model for analyzing writing styles.
Prompt 1
We’re going to perform a writing style analysis today. To start out, please tell me what the major components of a writing style (such as diction, intertextuality, etc.) are for a copywriter in the B2B marketing field?
Prompt 2
What are common mistakes made when analyzing writing style components?
Prompt 3
What aspects of writing style components haven’t been mentioned yet?
Prompt 4
Now create an outline of all the best practices for analyzing writing style, as generated above.
Copy this outline of best practices into a separate document. Title it: Best Practices for Analyzing Writing Styles.
2: Analyze your own writing style.
Prompt 5
Using the best practices for analyzing a writing style’s components as outlined in the attached document titled “Best Practices for Analyzing Writing Styles,” analyze the writing style of Kat based on the marketing blog examples in the attached documents. Generate a detailed, comprehensive analysis in outline format.
Attach the Best Practices for Analyzing Writing Styles document
Attach any relevant writing samples in one or more clearly labeled separate documents.
Copy this analysis into a separate document. Title it: Analysis of Kat’s Writing Style for Marketing Blogs.
3: Build a writing style scorecard.
Prompt 6
Using the attached analysis of Kat’s writing style for writing a marketing blog, build a scoring rubric to assess how well a piece of content aligns with Kat’s writing style. The scoring rubric should use variable integers (0-3, 0-5, 0-7) to score each writing style component, and the scoring rubric should total 100 points.
Attach Analysis of Kat’s Writing Style for Marketing Blogs.
Copy this rubric into a separate document. Title it: Scoring Rubric for Analyzing Kat’s Writing Style for Marketing Blogs.
4. Establish best practices.
Prompt 7
What are best practices for writing a marketing blog?
Copy results into a separate document. Make sure to review the results and adjust before asking AI to reference these best practices when generating content. Title it: Best Practices for Marketing Blogs.
5. Build best practices scorecard.
Prompt 8
Based on the list of best practices for writing a marketing blog as outlined in the attached document titled “Best Practices for Marketing Blogs,” build a scoring rubric to assess how well a piece of content aligns to those best practices. Use variable integers (0-3, 0-5, 0-7) to score each best practice component, and the scoring rubric should total 100 points.
Copy this rubric into a separate document. Title it: Best Practices for Marketing Blogs Scoring Rubric.
6: Collect context.
Prompt 9
What do you need to know from me in order to write a marketing blog about AI prompting frameworks?
You don’t need to copy results into a separate document. However you will need to fill out responses and add them as context to your prompt in the next step.
7: Generate content.
Prompt 10
You’re an expert in copywriting. Your task is to create a marketing blog. Some context: [add context from Step 6 plus whatever other information you have, such as outline, brief, feedback, etc.]
When generating this marketing blog, you will need to follow best practices as outlined in the attached document titled “Best Practices for Marketing Blogs.” You will also need to generate content according to the writing style as outlined in the attached document titled “Analysis of Kat’s Writing Style for Marketing Blogs.”
Attach the Best Practices for Marketing Blogs document.
Attach the Analysis of Kat’s Writing Style for Marketing Blogs document.
8. Evaluate and refine best practices.
Prompt 11
Using the attached document titled “Best Practices for Marketing Blogs Scoring Rubric,” analyze and score the asset you wrote according to the rubric.
Attach the Best Practices for Marketing Blogs Scoring Rubric document.
Prompt 12
Using the score and analysis of your marketing blog and the attached “Best Practices for Marketing Blogs Scoring Rubric,” create a refinement of the blog that improves on the score.
Attach the Best Practices for Marketing Blogs Scoring Rubric document.
Prompt 13
Using the “Best Practices for Marketing Blogs Scoring Rubric,” analyze and score your revision.
Attach the Best Practices for Marketing Blogs Scoring Rubric document.
9. Evaluate and refine writing style.
Prompt 14
Using the attached document titled “Scoring Rubric for Analyzing Kat’s Writing Style for Marketing Blogs,” analyze and score the asset you wrote to see how well you align to Kat’s writing style, according to the rubric.
Attach the Scoring Rubric for Analyzing Kat’s Writing Style for Marketing Blogs document
Prompt 15
Using the score and analysis of your marketing blog and the attached “Scoring Rubric for Analyzing Kat’s Writing Style for Marketing Blogs,” create a refinement of the blog that improves on the score.
Attach the Scoring Rubric for Analyzing Kat’s Writing Style for Marketing Blogs document
Prompt 16
Using the “Scoring Rubric for Analyzing Kat’s Writing Style for Marketing Blogs,” analyze and score your revision.
Attach the Scoring Rubric for Analyzing Kat’s Writing Style for Marketing Blogs document
10. Edit and adjust.
WE MADE IT GUYS. The first time I went through this process, it took me upwards of an hour. But, wow, did it deliver some fairly high quality stuff.
Now, you do whatever refinement and editing you’d normally do with AI-generated copy. Unless it’s already fine. Which it might be. Which is also why that hour of AI prompting is often worth it.
Is the PARE AI PLUS Framework worth it?
That’s an incredibly fair question. In fact, I already ran an experiment where I compared the results from these frameworks—and evaluated them according to the time and effort involved to see if the lengthy prompting process was worth it.
Spoiler: It depends.
✔️ If you’re not a copywriter—and don’t have access to a copywriter—and still need good stuff, then yes, it’s worth it.
✔️ If you need to generate a first draft of something that would take you hours to write anyways, whether copywriter or not, then yes. I think it’s worth it.
❌ It’s a long enough process that it’s probably not worth it for shorter texts, like social media posts—unless you don’t have a copywriter and aren’t getting good results with shorter prompting processes.
The Iron Horse insight.
Whichever framework or process you choose for generating content, there are a couple steps I recommend always trying to integrate in:
- Ask AI what it needs to do the job well.
- Ask AI to self-evaluate how well it did and where it could improve.
- Edit and refine the output. Whatever AI gives you, it’s only going to be a first draft.
I’ve come a long way since December 1, 2022, but one thing has never changed: I’m still extremely critical of AI-generated content. Then why have I written so much about AI? Because it doesn’t have to be bad.
Take the time, go through these steps, and you’ll see much better results from AI.
* At Iron Horse, we never use AI to generate final, un-edited copy. We do use AI to more efficiently create excellent writing. AI-assisted tasks may include brainstorming, pushing past writer’s block and getting to a first draft more quickly. All final copy is always written according to our expertise and best practices. Any input by AI is thoroughly analyzed and adjusted to produce the best result possible.
