Real Estate

Colliers shines by helping their professionals stand out on social media

One key reason for the program’s success: The company used the new tool’s capabilities to further enable existing employee engagement. 

“Many of our professionals wanted to be, or already were, active on social media for professional networking,” explains Karina de León, Colliers Canada’s Senior Specialist for Social Media and Content and leader of the company’s Canadian Hootsuite and Amplify programs. “As digital marketers, we’re aware of how valuable an online presence is—and other teams had this realization too. So we designed Amplify’s content library to offer a variety of content catering to the experts in our numerous service lines, rather than focusing on just brokerage.”

The team publishes more than 250 posts per month that employees can share via Amplify. Topics range from commercial real estate to diversity and inclusion, business and investing, leadership, career growth, holidays, and more, with employees encouraged to request content about topics relevant to them and their audiences. Giving employees a variety of content to share on social media has increased engagement with the platform and yielded impressive results for the program. Other regions have taken notice—and followed suit.

“We have an internal resource hub with a section dedicated to social media and social selling,” notes Dhindsa, “and I receive a lot of requests from individuals globally, brokers especially, to sign up for Amplify.” 

Canada is leading the way with 600+ active users, with the U.S. coming second at 250+. Colliers offices in Asia, Europe, and Latin America have also adopted the platform and continue to add new users.

New and existing employees at Colliers are regularly encouraged to try Amplify—and those who do are consistently impressed with how easy it is to use. 

“First-time users think it’s amazing,” says de León. “With a library of high-quality content at their fingertips, Amplify has proven to be very effective and empowering for our employees who want to post on personal social accounts.”

Another reason employees sign up is the company’s commitment to digital-first training. “When recruiting potential new hires, especially in brokerage, there is now this additional benefit of offering them another tool for their toolbox,” adds Dhindsa. 

With operations in 66 countries, it’s vital that teams and users are able to create and modify posts with local news and trends in mind. Amplify makes it easy, ensuring that content connects with regional audiences to boost relevance and engagement. 

Knowing that a decentralized content model like this can present brand risks such as fraudulent social accounts or malicious links, Colliers integrated ZeroFox into the Hootsuite platform. By having control over their content while also monitoring and taking action to remove any inappropriate or malicious content, the company is able to balance regional autonomy with the oversight it needs to protect its global brand.

Colliers is highly focused on attracting top talent, making recruitment and employer brand campaigns a key priority for its marketing team. 

“Colliers takes pride in recruiting people who are experts in their respective fields,” explains Aldo Stephanus, Senior Manager of Digital Marketing at Colliers Canada. “Through people-focused marketing campaigns, we get to showcase our professionals’ expertise and their experience working at Colliers, which attracts potential candidates with whom that message resonates.”

These campaigns have been so successful at generating engagement that they’ve inspired a major shift in the team’s social content strategy, according to de León. “Following the success of our first culture-focused campaign showcasing photos of the fun activities Colliers employees take part in on their flex days, we began to prioritize promoting people and culture content, in addition to commercial real estate updates."

The organization’s focus on engaging social content has become a competitive advantage for Colliers and its employees. With access to comprehensive social media resources and numerous opportunities to engage with company content online, Colliers’ employees are now posting more than their competitors in most regions.

“Having access to a growing audience of over nine million people in Canada through our employees’ networks has opened doors for our digital marketing strategy,” notes de León.

Colliers Canada is leading the way among other regions with its use of Hootsuite Social Listening to monitor sentiment and share of voice around the brand and campaigns.

Stephanus notes that the data and insights gathered by the team are also helpful from a management perspective, as they enable Colliers to quantify its efforts and help motivate different marketing teams. The data clearly shows the company’s impressive reach. One notable achievement: being ranked numerous times as the best website for commercial real estate in Canada.

“With Hootsuite and Amplify, we're able to maintain that position against our key competitors,” says Stephanus. “We’re seeing record numbers of downloads and views of our market research reports and thought leadership articles. A key component of this growth is social sharing from our employees through Hootsuite and Amplify.”

Colliers Canada is blazing the trail for other regions. What began as an easy-to-use platform for brokers in Vancouver has proved to be an indispensable tool in the organization’s global efforts to lead the way in employee advocacy, giving employees across teams a wider selection of digital tools to help them succeed in their roles.

Teams from brokerage and capital markets to marketing and HR are all seeing the impact of the platform in Canada and, increasingly, in the U.S. Up next: expanding Hootsuite and Amplify to enable even more regions. 

“Asia Pacific is actively expanding and Europe, Middle East, and Africa are in progress, with a few countries on board there already,” says Dhindsa. “One of my goals for the next year is to drive more growth and adoption in our remaining markets.”