Ripl – A Marketing Team in Your Pocket

Ripl – A Marketing Team in Your Pocket

Interacting on social media can be a daunting task for church and school communicators. You have to know what to say and the right way to say it (#hashtagsarehip), integrate images and video to engage your audience, time your posts perfectly to reach the most people, coordinate your efforts across multiple social media platforms, and, if you are really on top of things, track your responses to measure the success of your efforts. While you’re at it, do all this on a shoestring budget with little time to spend on your efforts.

I recently learned about a tool which offered an easier way to accomplish social media communication. During the last several weeks I’ve been doing periodic posts on WELSTech’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts using the Ripl mobile app (iOS and Android). The Ripl website boasts that the app has over 2,000,000 users who are creating eye-catching marketing content with ease.

They offer both a free version of the app and a Pro version with a subscription cost of $9.99 per month. The free version has a limited number of preset layouts and design features available. I’ve created less than ten images, and I have exhausted the layout options, but I can vary the font and colors used to make posts more unique. The Pro version boasts 200+ layout options and allows for overlay of your logo. In addition, it removes the Ripl watermark from your images. My favorite Pro feature is the ability to schedule posts to send at a later date and time.

Ripl does a great job of suggesting post topics. Each day there are three suggestions presented in the app. Examples include Lifehacks, Supporter Shout-Out, #TopicTuesday, Just For Fun, and Behind-the-Scenes. Once you share a post, Ripl tracks user engagement with the post and provides analytics on your engagement over time.

Rather than relying solely on my description, check out this customer case study from the Ripl blog.

Sample posts

Using only the free version of the app, I was able to experiment with a few WELSTech graphics. As part of the creation process, users are given the option of making the image static or animated. Here are some of each type which I’ve created for WELSTech.