What Is an AI Prompt Engineer and Why Do I Need One for My Business in 2024?

Creating engaging, high-quality content takes time. Small businesses don't have a ton of bandwidth like larger companies, and they lack the resources to hire a team of full-time writers and designers. 

Public enthusiasm after the release of ChatGPT virtually broke the internet. The tool hit 1 million users in only five days, a world record. Suddenly, overburdened smaller businesses saw hope for creating amazing content quickly and easily through the use of AI content marketing tools. 

Likewise, generative image tools like DALL-E 2, Midjourney, and even Canva's AI image generation tool opened the door to small businesses being able to create high-quality, original images quickly without hiring dedicated designers or paying for expensive stock images. 

Unfortunately, a lack of skill in crafting prompts in these AI tools can lead to mediocre results. Given poorly crafted prompts, AI tools will create mediocre content — or even content that gets penalized on Google (e.g., content that's low value and low quality). But, done properly, it can produce spectacular results, such as this AI-generated picture of an adorable dog wearing a suit and glasses created by hatchan, a prompt expert on Fiverr.

This amazing image was generated using Midjourney by hatchan, a Midjourney expert on Fiverr.

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What is an AI prompt engineer?

In plain English, an AI prompt is text or information you provide to the AI model to generate its output. In other words, it's a command that you give the tool and it tries to do it. For instance, "Write a list of topics for blog posts about Persian cats."

In a ChatGPT tool, you can ask a question and it'll respond, like in this example: 

ChatGPT's answer to the prompt "What is an AI prompt?"

There are different types of AI models, each trained to specialize in specific types of input and output. 

For example, OpenAI, the team behind ChatGPT, created three specific AI models:

• GPT-3: The "Generative Pre-trained Transformer, Version 3" model is trained to understand human language. This is the model behind DALL-E 2 and ChatGPT. 

• Codex: Understands computer code, and can translate human language into computer code. 

• Content filter: Used for content moderation, and to filter sensitive or unsafe content.

Each of these models requires unique prompting skills to receive the intended output from it. 

"A good AI prompt engineer should be able to understand the nuances of the language and be able to craft prompts that are meaningful and understandable to the AI system," says Abbas Moledina, founder of YouMakr.ai, a free generative AI company based in London. "They should also think critically about the language used and how it will be interpreted by the AI system."

Not only is a nuanced understanding of human language important, but also an understanding of how that language might be interpreted by a computer. This makes a background in data science a plus for any AI prompt engineer — not a must-have. 

The sudden and massive popularity of ChatGPT might give people the impression that "AI Prompts" only refer to the chat-style method used in ChatGPT. But anything fed to an AI model, from which it must produce output, is technically a prompt. 

Massive outline for an article on ChatGPT because of a non-ideal prompt. 

Benefits of using an AI prompt engineer for your business

A tool is only as useful as it is well-used. When dealing with generative AI, the first basic skill to master is the skill of the prompt itself. 

Stuart Lansdale, co-founder of AI tech aggregator Riku.ai, tells Fiverr, "Prompt engineering is a really overlooked skill but can make all the difference between someone looking at AI and coming to a conclusion that 'it isn't ready yet' and another business having that eureka moment, and completely changing their business chances of success."

For example, feeding ChatGPT the prompt "write an outline for an article about swimming" results in the following sprawling, gigantic, book-length article outline. The outline is unfocused, broad, and would require enormous creativity to make it competitive SEO-wise.

I gave it a different prompt, and the output was much better, although not perfect. That's probably because:

• I'm not a professional AI prompt engineer! (And why you should 

  hire an AI expert)

   from Fiverr)

• ChatGPT is still in preview mode and lacks some of the insight provided by internet-connected tools such as SurferSEO, Outranking, and Jasper.ai. 

ChatGPT SEO outline

How to find the right AI prompt engineer for your needs

To find the right prompt engineer for your needs, take these steps:

Determine your needs

First, consider what it is you'd like to accomplish. Are you looking for someone to help with AI image generation? Do you prefer quantity over quality? Are you looking for excellent outlines or rough drafts?

Afterward, you can begin your search for an AI prompt engineer. 

Search for AI prompt engineers on Fiverr

To speed up your process, you can use marketplaces like Fiverr to find AI prompt engineers fast. You can browse through various types of professionals, including writers, editors, and image creators. You can get started here. 

Look at their experience

AI might seem like a brand-new field, but it's been around for some time. OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, have been launching versions of AI tools for several years. And other AI writing tools, such as Jasper and Writer, have been around longer than ChatGPT. 

Jasper's AI writing tool was launched in 2021, and Writer has been around since August 2020. 

An AI prompt engineer with one year of experience might even be considered a "grandparent of AI prompt writing experience."

Read/view their samples

AI prompt writing isn't just a matter of "getting lucky." There's a specific pattern of training that can make one AI prompt engineer better than another. Give a prompt, analyze the output, then tweak the prompt until you get what you want in the output. And you do that over and over again to get better at it. 

The proof is in the pudding. Just ask the AI prompt engineer to provide a large collection of samples of the outputs their prompts have produced. 

Examples of AI prompt writing for small businesses

The potential use cases for AI in small businesses are constantly growing. Let's take a look at some of them:

Image generation

A few powerful AI image generation tools exist, most prominently DALL-E 2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion. I tested Midjourney AI tool with the prompt "beautiful forest with pixies" and got the following:

As you can see, the AI-generated forests are very beautiful, but some some have no pixies, while others include people which were not mentioned in the actual prompt.

If my product depended on pixies being in the image, I'd totally need to look for a prompt engineer who could get some beautiful pixies for me. But even without pixies, aren't these AI-generated images just incredible!?

SEO article outline generation

Several AI tools can create SEO article outlines. On SurferSEO's free outline generation tool, the prompt is the keyword or title that we type into the search box next to the button "Generate Outline," as shown below. SurferSEO is an AI SEO Tool that uses various data points to work out SEO outlines and content that its algorithms believe will rank well in search engine results.

Content creation

Prompts fed into AI content creation tools help you create the content itself. Writer.com's CoWrite tool auto-completes content based on the prompt you give it. After writing a few words in this AI content writer tool, you hit Ctrl+Enter, and Writer's AI starts writing for you. 

"Good AI prompts for creating content include topics that are timely and relevant to the audience," says Moledina of YouMakr. "As well as images that are visually appealing and easy to understand. By using good AI prompt writing, I can quickly generate content that's valuable to my followers and customers."

Solving challenging computer programming tasks

OpenAI's codex model uses prompts to solve computer programming tasks. I sent a simple prompt to show me how to access ChatGPT programmatically, and it outputted some code in return. 

The code doesn't look right to me. But my prompt probably needs tweaking, highlighting the need to work with someone with more experience in this particular model. 

Codex AI-generated code

I fed the same prompt to ChatGPT and received a very different answer. The code looks closer to what I needed. This only shows how versatile this new tool is! Using ChatGPT combined with precisely-worded AI prompts opens the door to incredible opportunities. 

Other business uses of AI prompts

The more data an AI model has, the better it becomes at providing output that matches what you're looking for. Because ChatGPT has been fed an enormous amount of data to base its conclusions on, its potential use cases are huge. 

Here's an incomplete list of potential uses for this tool, each followed by an example prompt: 

• Debugging 

  websites

  : "My website is written in WordPress. I have a blank screen. What steps should I take to fix it?"

• Writing business plans

  : "Write the outline of a business plan for a financial technology company based in San Diego that intends to help the unbanked through easy-to-use fintech apps."

• Learning

  : "I am new to blockchain. Explain it to me as if I was ten years old."

• Marketing

  : "Describe the major steps involved in every single successful online marketing strategy ever carried out. Also, define what the criteria are to be considered successful."

The precise accuracy of the above results should be taken with a pinch of salt, but that's why the formula for utilizing AI most successfully is probably something like:

Great Prompts + AI + Human Touch = Major Time Saver!

Use Fiverr to hire AI prompt engineer freelancers

Learning how to talk to ChatGPT and other tools comes with a steep learning curve. Some people catch on quickly and begin yielding favorable results within months. Others, it may take longer, especially when you have a small business to run. 

The alternative: hire someone who already knows AI prompt engineering and is dedicated to continuing learning about future editions. 

Fiverr is an online marketplace of highly skilled freelancers, with many specializing in the new and exciting field of AI. Fiverr's AI freelancers offer everything from AI prompt engineering to fact-checking and content editing services.