The prompt stack every solo marketer should steal
A copy-paste library of 24 prompts that took our editor from three drafts a week to twelve. Includes the exact system prompts, the guardrails, and how we chain them for repeatable output.
Solo marketers don't need another 'ultimate prompt guide'. They need a small, opinionated library of prompts that consistently produces publishable output — and a workflow to run them in the right order.
This is the exact stack our editorial team runs every week. Twenty-four prompts, grouped into four stages: research, outline, draft, and polish. Each one has a system message, a user template, and a set of guardrails that stop the model from wandering into the usual clichés.
Stage one is research. Three prompts: 'find the five best sources on X', 'extract the non-obvious claims', and 'flag anything that contradicts itself'. Run them on Claude with web search enabled and you'll have a source pack in under ten minutes.
Stage two is outline. Four prompts that turn the source pack into a structured brief: audience definition, thesis statement, section headings, and a one-line hook per section. The hook prompt is the secret weapon — most AI-written content dies at the intro because the model defaults to 'In today's fast-paced world…'. A dedicated hook prompt with three bad examples in the system message fixes that instantly.
Stage three is draft. Twelve prompts, one per common section type: intro, definition, contrarian take, case study, how-to, data drop, quote-and-react, myth-bust, checklist, mini-FAQ, transition, and CTA. Each one takes the outline brief plus the relevant source snippet and produces a single section. Chaining twelve small prompts beats one giant 'write the whole article' prompt every time.
Stage four is polish. Five prompts: tone pass, cliché killer, fact-check, cut-30%, and headline generator. The cliché killer alone is worth the whole library — it strips 'in the ever-evolving landscape' and its cousins in a single pass.
The trick isn't the individual prompts — it's the chaining. Research feeds outline. Outline feeds draft. Draft feeds polish. Skip a step and quality collapses; run them in order and a solo operator can ship a week's worth of content in a single afternoon.
Copy the whole library, run it against your own topic, and tweak the tone guardrails to match your brand. In two weeks you'll have your own version — and you'll never stare at a blank page again.