Every March, basketball fans fill in brackets to guess college basketball winners.
Every October, my family fills in our brackets to see if our favorite candy has changed.
Technically, we could do this at any time of the year. But it’s Halloween season here, which means plenty of candy to try.
It was a long car ride a few years ago that my wife and I developed the candy game. Since I’ve realized you can use this kind of bracket with anything, including content ideas.
First, here’s how it looks with candy:
We separated 64 popular candies into four divisions (Bars, Bites, Bits, and Sucks). We gave each a seed, like sports playoffs.
Your bracket does not need to have as many or be as complicated (unless you also have a long car ride).
The idea is to put a list head-to-head, two at a time, and eventually declare a winner.
If you can’t decide what content to create next, try using a bracket to decide. This works on your own, or even better, as a team discussion.
Just take that topic list you already have and put it into bracket form:
If you want to be more strategic, you can use concepts as topic themes, so you’re putting similar ideas head-to-head.
It’s also a great thought experiment around content organization. If you had to create four “divisions” of content, what would they be? Constraints can provide clarity.
Hopefully, this can be a serious exercise while also being fun.
Bracketology can be a choose-your-own-adventure:
- Download the candy bracket (PDF)
- Copy this content bracket template (Google Sheet)
Fill out your bracket—candy or content—and let me know what ends up being the champion for you.