Talking to Claude

Talking to Claude

Treat Claude like a brilliant new hire on their first week. It knows the field better than most people you could hire. It knows nothing about your business, your customers, or how you like things done, and it will not ask unless you tell it to.

That is the whole shift. Most bad output is not a bad model, it is a brief nobody would have accepted from a person.

The five moves

1. Interview me first. Before it writes anything, tell it to ask you questions until it has what it needs. "Before you write this, ask me whatever you need to know about my business, my customer and my goal. One question at a time." The questions themselves usually tell you what your brief was missing.

2. Critique before rewrite. When a draft is close but not right, do not ask for a rewrite. Ask what is weak about it first. "Tell me the three weakest things about this draft and why, then rewrite only those." You get a considered edit rather than a different draft with the same problems.

3. Three versions, then choose. Ask for three takes with different angles, not three wordings of the same take. Say which one to build on and why. Choosing is faster than describing, and the reason you give is the best brief you will write all day.

4. Show the working. Ask what it assumed. "List the assumptions you made that I did not give you." This is where invented facts surface, and it takes one line.

5. One first, then the rest. Never ask for twenty of anything until one is right. Get one caption, one email, one section exactly how you want it, then say "more like that one".

Weak brief, strong brief

Weak: "Write me a newsletter about our new service." Strong: "Write a newsletter to 400 past customers about our new service. They already know us and have bought once. One idea, one story, one thing they can do. Under 300 words, no exclamation marks. Ask me anything you need before you start."

Weak: "Make this sound better." Strong: "This goes on a page where people decide whether to book. Tell me which sentences make them hesitate, and why, before you change anything."

Weak: "Give me content ideas." Strong: "Here are the five posts that did best for us and the three that flopped. Find the pattern, tell me what it is, then give me ten ideas that fit the pattern and two that deliberately test it."

Checkpoint

You have done this module when three prompts you actually reuse are saved somewhere you can find them. The next lesson on skills turns those into something you call by name.