Microsoft Copilot Prompts Tutorial

About this video

In a video made in partnership with Microsoft, Kevin Stratvert teaches how to write better Microsoft Copilot prompts using marketing copy for his fictional Kevin Cookie Company as the running example. A bare prompt — ‘I want marketing copy’ — gets only follow-up questions back, so he iteratively adds the four parts of a strong prompt. First the goal (marketing copy), then context (promoting the new Double Chocolate Chip Cookie in an email campaign to previous customers), which yields a formatted email with a subject line — though Copilot invents a 10% discount he says the company would never offer, so edits are still needed. Next he adds expectations (simple language a fifth grader could read, some humor, under 200 words), and the output gets shorter, simpler, and funnier. Finally he adds source material by dragging in a document of the team’s own differentiators, which Copilot incorporates into the message. He recaps the structure as goal + context + expectations + source, notes prompting can be done in one shot or iteratively, and shows where to find inspiration: the sample starter prompts and View Prompts / Copilot Lab galleries built into Copilot panes across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, and Outlook, each app offering prompts tuned to its context. He closes by recommending Microsoft’s free role-based Copilot training and webinars.

Key takeaways

• A strong Copilot prompt has four parts: goal, context, expectations, and source material — a vague prompt like ‘I want marketing copy’ only earns clarifying questions.
• Adding context (the product, the email campaign, the audience of past customers) turned the response into a formatted email with a subject line.
• Stating expectations — fifth-grade reading level, humor, under 200 words — measurably improved tone, simplicity, and length in the example.
• Attaching a source document lets Copilot pull in your own facts, such as a team’s pre-written product differentiators, instead of inventing details (it had fabricated a 10% discount).
• Every Microsoft 365 app’s Copilot pane offers sample starter prompts and a View Prompts gallery, with the fuller Copilot Lab for inspiration; prompts can be written fully upfront or refined iteratively.

Episode details: published August 22, 2024 · 9:50 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Kevin Stratvert’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

← Previous: How to Convert & Compress Video | Wondershare Uniconverter · Next: WooCommerce Tutorial - Build eCommerce Website on WordPress →

All Kevin Stratvert videos · Kevin Stratvert profile · Kevin Stratvert on YouTube