Toronto start up Collage Offers HR Platform to Help Small Businesses Thrive

The small business community is strong, in part because of their focus on products, services, and customers, but also because of their support for one another. As the community grows, so do opportunities to help fellow businesses in their marketing and operations, and, ultimately, thrive themselves. This extends to human resources, a side to operations that is often neglected due to lack of available resources, costs to implement, and tedious tasks involved.

Collage is a free HR and benefits platform built to help small businesses in Canada. It consolidates HR functions like onboarding, administration, and benefits into one easy-to-use platform. To promote their product, Collage focuses on sharing information that is applicable to Canadian businesses, and making it easier to find relevant, human, and personalized content that appeals to them.

A Small Business Sharing Office Hero Stories in Cinemagraph Facebook Ads

When it comes to sharing, promoting, and advertising that content, Collage uses multiple social platforms to spread their message. They found the most success on Facebook, boosting posts featuring tips and interviews with key HR leaders in Canada, and using static content with it. Kira, the Content Marketing Manager at Collage, shared that though they experimented with video in the past, they found that the costs and time involved in hiring actors, getting animation done, and putting scripts together were quite high; it was easier to publish static content.

“I think these subtle moving images that tell a bit of a story that people can relate to because they’re set in an office setting, they’re set with a story and a background that they can relate to, it let’s us spend more time on that creative side of it instead of just rushing to publish the most loud and click-bait material that we can find.”

Kira Charron, Content Marketing Manager at Collage

The idea of using just an iPhone and a tripod to create cinemagraphs appealed to Kira and the Collage team because they could spend more time on the creativity and the messaging rather than revisit the worries of video past. Using Cinemagraph Pro for iOS means more freedom to think about what appeals to their audience, use their own skills and talent to produce Facebook ads, and move fast – without making the same old in-your-face ads that everyone is attuned to on social media. For a small business advertising on Facebook, it allows them to stay competitive, and be more creative at the same time.

“Being able to use Flixel and just whip it out on my iPhone and to create something in our office, where we’re all collaborating, and it can come together in less than a day, it has been really useful for us. It allows me to spend more time on new ways to deliver stories.”