CYBATHLON (of ETH Zurich) is a platform for events that advance the research and development of user-centric assistive technology and foster inclusion for people with disabilities.
The challenge
CYBATHLON’s events (main one every four years, smaller Challenges every year) work to highlight two messages: the need for inclusion of people with disabilities, and the opportunities and limitations of technologies and R&D.
Their small but ambitious team wanted to level up their event coverage and organise live, in-depth coverage of its international event. While the team had built a loyal and highly engaged following around the events, CYBATHLON wanted to grow its content strategy beyond those periods for consistent, long-term growth.
CYBATHLON approached The Content Engine and we were thrilled to partner with this purpose-led organisation. Around 15% of people across the world (some 1.1 billion) experience some form of disability, and CYBATHLON is actively supporting and sharing stories of these affected individuals.
The solution
To ensure a stream of high-quality and regular content on social channels, The Content Engine team ideated across CYBATHLON’s eight disciples, coming up with suggestions that specifically appealed to the scientific community every week.
To kickstart event coverage, The Content Engine team embedded itself within the competition: watching the full live stream, coordinating with people on the ground, live tweeting, turning around video and carousels within hours and noting event highlights.
This content was also repurposed to fill social media feeds between events. This included turning blogs into animated graphics, turning event highlights into evergreen videos, and more. CYBATHLON content took on an outside-in approach: looking at the industry at large as opposed to solely focusing on the organisation.
To ensure the content was accessible to all, video scripts were included in captions and post formats followed strict hashtag and emoji guidelines to allow screen readers to access the content.
The team also launched a newsletter featuring exclusive interviews with people impacted and involved with CYBATHLON, a human-led approach to help connect with the audience.
The quality of our social media communications, content creation and presentation have been of a much higher standard, kudos to you. As a result, we were able to reach the great majority of the audiences on various social networks.
ANNEGRET KERN
Co-Head, Cybathlon
The impact
The Content Engine team helped grow CYBATHLON’s social media presence, consistently publishing high-quality content and amplifying event coverage.
The CYBATHLON LinkedIn account boomed. It gained 100 new followers each month (reaching 5,000+ as of January 2024) and maintained a 5% engagement rate from February to August 2023 – double the industry standard. During that time the LinkedIn account garnered 30,000 video views on LinkedIn.
The live-tweeting of one of CYBATHLON’s annual Challenges in March 2023 generated over 20,000 impressions on Twitter, with The Content Engine team publishing video and visual updates within hours to CYBATHLON’s 3,000+ audience.
The newsletter ‘For a world without barriers’ has grown to over 1,500 subscribers within three months of launching.
