Mediaboss Marketing

A police car in Japan. (Mainichi)

SAITAMA -- Japan has seen a spate of trouble recently surrounding "loans between individuals" made via social networking services and internet bulletin boards, prompting authorities to warn people to beware of the schemes.

According to the National Consumer Affairs Center of Japan (NCAC), there have been cases where people have become involved in this type of lending due to the poverty caused by the coronavirus pandemic, and the center is calling for caution, warning people "not to borrow cash from strangers."

While some offering the loans claim to be individuals, there are cases in which they are actually illegal moneylenders. On May 12, Saitama Prefectural Police arrested Mitsuhiro Kimura, 66, an unemployed man from Tsuzuki Ward, Yokohama, on suspicion of violating the Money Lending Business Act by lending a total of 390,000 yen (about $3,550) in cash to three women between February and July 2020. They served him a fresh arrest warrant on June 1 on suspicion of violating the interest rate regulation law by imposing ultra-high rates. He has admitted to both allegations.

According to the prefectural police, since February 2020, Kimura had been sending messages offering loans to women who posted such comments as "Please lend me money" on social networking sites and online bulletin boards. Altogether, he is suspected of lending a total of about 6 million yen (about $54,700) to more than 30 women from their teens to their 50s, including high school girls. Kimura allegedly had the victims send him photos via social media of their IDs and of them naked. Police believe that he used the pictures as "collateral."

Police launched an investigation in October 2020, when a woman in her 20s consulted them, saying, "I borrowed money through an online message board, but now I can't pay it back, and there have been persistent demands for payments."

The prefectural police life and economy division warns, "If you don't return the money you borrowed, you may become subject to secondary harm such as threats. Don't borrow from illegal dealers."

A look at Twitter reveals several posts and accounts offering loans, with some stating, "We can help you raise funds" and "Interest-free loans available for women only." But continuously lending money to an unspecified number of people, even between individuals, can be deemed a "money lending business," and failing to register it with the national or prefectural government violates the Money Lending Business Act as unlicensed business activities. It has also been confirmed that some lenders threaten to disclose naked photos on the internet if the money is not paid back, or sexually exploit their clients in return for lending them money.

According to the NCAC, the number of consultations regarding loans between individuals has been on the rise nationwide in recent years. Inquirers are mainly aged from their 20s to 40s, and it is believed that they take out such loans because of the convenience of communicating through social media and online bulletin boards.

The center is urging people not to use interpersonal loans and to consult the Consumer Hotline at 188 (in Japanese) if they get into trouble.

(Japanese original by Ayako Hiramoto, Saitama Bureau)

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Trouble over individual loans offered through social media on the rise in Japan - The Mainichi - The Mainichi

You have finally gotten a job as a social media manager, but you feel clueless on how to effectively take the reins of responsibility without getting overwhelmed. Self-doubts are already creeping in because you are a fresh graduate who has no prior experience. Listen to me, breathe, just breathe. So many people have found themselves in this exact situation in the past, and today, they are doing remarkably well.

Managing multiple accounts as a social media manager means you have to cater to different target audiences, create organic and amazing content, and also fully understand what grabs the attention of this diverse audience. For instance, The Twitter-sphere in Nigeria is mostly dominated by millennials and Gen- Z, and most conversations around societal issues start on Twitter. Most users have limited attention span, hence, the 280-word characters limit. On Instagram, the dissemination of information is more photo-centric, with 2,200 characters and 30 hashtags limits respectively.

Given the above scenarios, you will have to employ different approaches when dealing with these target audiences. Twitter: short, catchy, and straight-to-the-point tweets (with a more relaxed tone). Instagram: compelling and neatly edited visuals with captivating captions. For LinkedIn, which is a professional networking site and is mostly dominated by Generation X and millennials, the tone to be employed here will be formal.

It can be quite daunting to manage these pages efficiently but as a competent creator, it is your responsibility to seek out methods that will enable you to discharge your duties seamlessly.Consider the following tips below to be a badass at what you do:

Planning

Every good cause requires planning. As the content creator, you have to develop different procedures peculiar to the pages you will be managing, this will help you have a firm grasp of how to run the pages effectively. For instance, how can you pass across a message about a brand on Twitter without sounding too formal and at the same time convince your audience to take the necessary actions? How can you jump on trends to convert your audience without straying off from the companys core message? What time frame works best for the different content you have created to be posted? These and many other questions are to be taken into consideration when coming up with strategies that can be used to manage multiple accounts successfully.

Creating an Editorial Calendar

The editorial calendar will be used to manage the publication of content for the companys website, newsletters, and social media pages. It will also contain ideas generated during brainstorming sessions with other creatives, the scheduled day for publication, and so on. This calendar can be shared with other team members to ensure cooperation and seamless posting/publications.

Utilising Social Media Scheduling Tools

There are some social media management tools that can help you to schedule contents and automatically posts them at scheduled times. These tools will make social media management easier for you. Some of them include:

Making Use of Analytics

Remember that your core responsibility is to keep the audiences interest and also convert them. So, it is pertinent to make use of trending topics and keywords to achieve this. Software tools like Mention which enables brands and agencies to listen to their target audience, and Buzzsumo which deals with content insights used in generating ideas, are a great fit for developing that level of engagement for the target audience.

Provide Quality Content

This is one proven way to gain new followers on any social media platform. You have to always dish out quality content to retain old followers and convert new ones. Make sure you carve out a unique feature that makes you stand out from every other creative out there and watch how your companys fanbase will grow.

Consistency

The importance of this cannot be overemphasized. To nurture an excellent online presence and develop a solid fanbase, it is crucial to post regularly on all social media platforms.

Engagement

There is some sort of connection that is usually established when the target audience is being interacted with. It builds trust and makes it easier for the followers to relate well with the pages handler who is you. Also, it wont hurt to follow different influencers accounts, make comments on their pages, and share their good content at times to gain more followers. Making use of the appropriate hashtags, most especially on Twitter and Instagram, is very necessary for gaining more followers too.

Know your Audience

The conversion technique that will work for baby boomers on Facebook will most definitely not work for the wokemillennials and Generation Z on Twitter. It is pertinent to come up with specific techniques suitable for each target audience to reach more people.

Note that aside from managing multiple accounts, you may be required to write SEO-related articles on the companys website which will rank high on Google, and also come up with captivating content to send out as daily newsletters to the subscribers. You could take a crash course online to know more about search engine optimisation which will be of tremendous help to you when writing your articles. And for the daily newsletters you will be sending out regularly, always keep them short, easy to relate to, and captivating. Make the newsletter the type of teaser your subscribers always look forward to reading en-route to work every morning.

You have absolutely nothing to be scared of. Remember, you were chosen from numerous applicants because you are qualified for this role. It is okay to make a few mistakes as an entry-level staff and learn from them. In a few years, you will look back and be amazed at how you were able to scale through this phase successfully. Make sure you have fun at your new job.

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Ayobami Esther: Are you an Entry-Level Social Media Manager? These Tips Will Help You in Your New Role - BellaNaija

After Dulquer Salmaan, Suresh Gopi denies having an account on Clubhouse. The superstar has alerted fans about people impersonating him on the social networking platform. Clubhouse, an audio-only social networking app has been gaining popularity lately and many fake profiles impersonating celebrities have been created on the platform reportedly. Suresh Gopi recently took to his official Twitter handle and shared that it is disturbing to see impersonation on social platforms. The actor further warned that such tomfoolery will have severe consequences. This is absolutely disturbing! Impersonating a person on a social platform and bluffing others with his voice. Kindly note that I haven't started any account on Clubhouse. Any further tomfoolery will be seriously dealt with, Suresh Gopi said. Earlier, Dulquer Salmaan had said that it is not cool to impersonate him on social media. So, I am not on Clubhouse. These accounts are not mine. Please dont impersonate me on social media. Not Cool! Dulquer shared. Prithviraj Sukumaran too denied being on the particular platform. On the work front, Suresh Gopi was filming for 'Paapppan', a movie helmed by Joshiy, prior to the lockdown. The superstar has roped in to play the lead role of Abraham Mathew Mathan in the film. The team was shooting in Pala and had put the shoot on a temporary halt considering the current scenario. Meanwhile, Suresh Gopi has also signed for 'Kaaval', an upcoming movie directed by Nithin Renji Panicker and the actor will be seen in the action hero avatar in the upcoming film.Suresh Gopi's last outing was 'Varane Avashyamund' helmed by Anoop Sathyan. He shared the screen with his all-time favourite co-star Shobana in the film, and it undeniably won the hearts of the audience.

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Suresh Gopi warns fans about people impersonating him on social media - Times of India

Tinder will finally be letting users avoid all their exes, friends, colleagues, relatives, and anyone else they might not want to run into on a dating app. The company announced today that it will start allowing people to block their phone contacts.

According to The Verge, romance-seekers can access the feature from their settings, under the Block Contacts menu, where they can define which contact they would like to block, meaning these people will not surface for them, and vice versa.

Users can either upload their full contacts list to Tinder or add them individually. Tinder said it will not store everyone's contacts, only the ones they have chosen to block and people can unblock or disconnect their contacts list at any time.

Blocked contacts will not be notified they have been blocked. There is no easy way of knowing if an ex or other undateworthy person even has a Tinder account, it's more of a preventative measure. If a blocked individual has since changed their phone number and joins Tinder, their account could still surface.

Those who wanted to avoid the possibility of an awkward digital run-in forever, this might, finally, give them a fighting chance at doing so.

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Tinder Will Now Let Users Block People in Their Phone Contacts to Avoid Awkward Encounters on the App - Gadgets 360

Writer's block is too often a big impediment to effective copy, which means it lowers a scribe's performance in the eyes of a client or employer. Every writer may go through it, but there aremore demands placed on storytellers given today's breakneck speed of digital marketing and social media.

Copy.ai taps into the power of artificial intelligence (A.I.) to give professional wordsmiths, editors, marketers, and even students the ability to review several written versions of what they'd like to write about to overcome the psychological barrier of writer's block. This tool also eliminates those annoying errors and redundant phrases that glare at discerning readers.

Chris Lu and Paul Yacoubian founded Copy.ai to give content creators an ability to optimize written text. And democratize access to creativity.

Having tried it, I found the A.I.-powered tool turns concepts into conversational and relatable text. The site can optimize messages including product descriptions, blogs, social media posts, landing pages, and everything else with text.

A user types a description and the tool generates almost a dozen versions of possible headlines, intros, and bodies, and even Valentine's Day greetings. For example, the A.I. can ideate different versions of a paragraph from which to choose. Even if you only input a few words to describe the subject matter.

Interestingly, the tool seems like a godsend for procrastinating students who pull all-nighters.

Disrupting a shrinking industry

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 131,200 writers and authors in the United States. The average wage is $30 an hour.

There is an expected 2 percentdecline in employment (equaling 3,100 fewer jobs) from 2019 to 2029.

The job losses may be exacerbated by A.I. and machine learning, since innovators are training these emerging technologies to completely replace human scribes. Whether that's possible remains to be seen. (This writer thinks that will definitely happen sooner or later.)

About six or seven years ago, there were primitive tools that attempted to rewrite communications that were copied and pasted from other websites. These were intended to pass plagiarism checks. But the tech in those days produced such bad output as to make them unusable.

Fast-forward to today and A.I. wordsmiths can now craft intelligent phrases that seem more humanly than your average scribe's. Therefore, the future of copywriting is here.

Just watch how IBM Watson destroyed human competitors on Jeopardy. And that took place a decade ago. Similarly, it's now almost impossible for the best chess players to defeat Google's AlphaZero.

It may be humbling, but truth is truth.

The human touch

In music, an emotive rendition of The Sound of Music or other classics makes the sheet come alive. Can computers match the rhythmic artistry of the masters? Time will tell.

When it comes to writing styles, there's an overwhelming preference for simple, digestible language. Nonfiction is the dominant force that has drastically reduced the existence of fiction-writing artistry.

With Copy.ai, it's difficult for an editor or audience to determine that the communication they're seeing on a device screen is crafted by a nonsentient entity. The output text is relatable, which creates the illusion of a personal touch. The A.I.'s phrases and syntax are not mechanical at all.

"Converting ideas into text is where this magic happens.I can see this supporting peoplewhosefirst language might not be Englishby validating their ideas. They often know exactly what to say but are unsure how it might land. Having a variety of options will help them craft the perfect piece. --Tarik Sehovic, growth adviser, Copy.Ai

A natural progression

One thing is certain: Brands, marketers, and advertisers will love the increasing capabilities of A.I. and machine learning.

Should copywriters and editors fear the same? They should remember that readers are their customers and A.I. tools lead to better drafts. Audiences are short on time and therefore impatient with badly written text.

Writers and authors must adapt with the times or risk being relegated to a bygone era. A consumer-facing wordsmith should use the best tools for engaging audiences.

There's a reason why stone tablets, scrolls, pencils, and typewriters are obsolete. These don't add enough value in the Information Age. What does add value is efficient and effective messages that are consumed by target demographics.

Cognitive systems are radically changing what we think of as "content." And traditional forms are being eclipsed by smarter, interactive mediums.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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How This Startup Aims to Disrupt Copywriting Forever - Inc.