Prompting Use Cases

What Can You Actually Use AI Prompting For?

AI tools are most useful when you know what they're good at. Here's a practical breakdown of common use cases across different areas of work.

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Writing

• Write a blog or story
• Generate ideas for writing projects
• Act as an editor for tone, clarity, grammar
• Get feedback from a specific perspective ("as a journalist", "as a teacher")
• Outline chapters of a book or essay
• Rewrite content in a different style or format

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Business

• Competitor analysis
• Draft a business plan or strategy
• Research market size and trends
• Talk through a new idea or plan
• Suggest brand colours, logo concepts, company names
• Create SWOT analyses or business model canvases

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Coding

• Debug code
• Rewrite code in a specific framework or language
• Learn a coding language (e.g. Python, JavaScript)
• Code review and optimisation suggestions
• Pair programming - talk through solutions
• Generate code for websites based on content or wireframes
• Write database queries based on data samples

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Marketing

• Draft social media posts
• Create a social media or marketing plan
• Generate content ideas for website or blog
• SEO optimisation suggestions
• Check and improve copy for clarity and persuasion
• Write ad copy or email campaigns

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Admin

• Schedule and prioritise tasks
• Write professional emails
• Plan your day or week effectively
• Summarise meeting notes
• Create templates for repetitive communications

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Repetitive Tasks

• Data manipulation (extracting, cleaning, reformatting)
• Anything you'd typically do with spreadsheet formulas
• Convert transcripts to subtitles (and vice versa)
• Batch processing text or data
• Find and replace operations at scale

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Learning And Research

• Explain complex concepts simply
• Summarise long articles or documents
• Compare and contrast different approaches
• Generate study guides or quiz questions
• Research a topic and provide an overview with sources

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Fun And Personal

• Plan travel itineraries
• Suggest gift ideas
• Talk through a personal problem (finding a hobby, making decisions)
• Generate creative ideas (party themes, recipes, activities)

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What AI Isn't Great At (Yet)

• Anything requiring real-time data (unless the tool has web access)
• Making final decisions on important matters
• Replacing human judgement on nuanced, high-stakes issues
• Generating truly original creative breakthroughs (it remixes, doesn't invent)
• Tasks requiring deep domain expertise without guidance

Use AI as a collaborator and accelerator, not a replacement for thinking.