SAMBeta
Prompt library
Prompts worth copying verbatim, and the ones that will disappoint you.
The shape that works: one concrete ask, a named time range where it matters, and the output shape when you care about it.
Numbers and reporting
| Prompt | What comes back |
|---|---|
| How many leads did we get last week vs the week before? | Both numbers, the delta, the exact date range, and the forms behind it |
| Give me partial captures vs completed submissions on our top form, as a rate, with the week-over-week trend | Ask for the rate and the trend explicitly. It has both, but defaults to totals |
| Which question in the demo form loses the most people? | Per-question drop-off |
| Rank our blog posts by meetings booked, not pageviews | Pipeline ranking. It names the metric it ranked on either way |
| How much traffic came from our LinkedIn UTM link this month? | Visitors and form starts by UTM. It'll note it has no GA sessions |
| Which landing pages convert visitors into meetings best? | Per-URL funnel, period over period |
| Show me every lead from a company with 200+ employees this quarter, with the contact | Works. The firmographics are there, so keep the window sane, or ask for a background job |
| Summarise the last quarter by channel | It'll offer to run this in the background. Say yes |
Writing
| Prompt | Why it's phrased this way |
|---|---|
| Draft 5 LinkedIn posts from our best-performing blog this month. Use our voice doc in the Vault. | Pointing at the Vault is the fastest way to stop generic output |
| Write email 1 of a 5-part sequence for ops leaders. Same claims as our positioning brief, no exclamation marks. | Audience, source of truth, one hard rule |
| Rewrite this paragraph so it leads with the number. [paste] | Pasted text always beats a description of the text |
| Connection request note for a VP Marketing at a Series B SaaS, under 300 characters | It meets the limit and states the count |
| Turn these call notes into 3 posts. [paste the notes] | Give it raw material. A draft it could have written without your material is a failed draft |
Content and CMS
- Review our published blogs and tell me which three are weakest, and why (background job)
- Read this post and suggest a better title and meta description
- Create a draft blog entry from this outline, don't publish it
- Swap the thumbnail on the pricing post to this image (attach the image in the same message)
- Schedule the case study to publish Thursday morning
- What's sitting in draft right now?
Images
- Generate a blog thumbnail for "The 5 forms every B2B site needs": dark background, one bold number, no stock photography
- Two options for a social card, in the style of the images above (drop the references in first)
- Upload this to the CMS asset library with alt text and set it on the post
Research
- What has [competitor] shipped in the last month?
- Read [url] and tell me what they claim vs what we claim
- Are we showing up in AI answers for "lead capture tool"?
HubSpot
Read-only, and only if HubSpot is connected to your Surface account. It won't create or update anything there.
- Which of our open deals came from a Surface form?
- What's the last activity on [company]?
- List our open deals by owner
Scheduling and memory
- Every weekday at 8:30, post who has a draft scheduled today
- Every Monday at 9, post last week's lead numbers with the week-over-week change
- Remember: we say "buyers", never "prospects". Every post opens with a number.
- What do you remember about us?
See Scheduled posts and What it remembers.
Prompts that will disappoint you
| Prompt | What actually happens | Say this instead |
|---|---|---|
| How many sessions did we get? | It explains it has no Google Analytics, then answers with visitors and form starts | How many visitors and form starts, split by source? |
| Partials vs completions on Demo Request | If no form is named exactly that, it asks which of five you meant | Name the form as it appears in Surface, or say the highest-traffic form |
| Write me some posts | Competent, generic copy | Give it a source (a blog, call notes, a customer list) and a voice doc |
| Attaching 12 thumbnails at once | It reads 8 and names the 4 it skipped | Two messages |
Attaching an .xlsx export | Skipped, with a note saying so | Export as CSV |
| Put this in the Google Sheet / update the Notion doc | One line saying it can't | Ask for the answer in Slack and paste it yourself |