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Meta’s strategy for quickly gaining and retaining millions of users
Part 1 – User On-boarding Strategy
Within an hour of launch, Threads had one million users
The platform reached 10 million users in seven hours
30 million users in a day
100 million users in 5 days and
150 million users in 2 weeks
Threads is now the fastest app to reach its first million users. The primary reason behind this exceptional feat is its user-onboarding strategy.
In the…
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#business development#business management#business startegy#growth hacks#leadership#management#marketing#motivation#sales#skills#social media#social media strategy#strategy#success
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How Content Marketing Can Help Your Business Stand Out | Liveblack
Content is the best investment opportunity for your brand because success lies in high-quality content. Now, the most crucial question is why content helps you get the success you’ve dreamed of. How has content become so influential? To answer these questions, we need to understand the term content marketing. Looks like something familiar is coming on your way. Then, yes. We will share something more prominent to help your brand reach new heights.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a marketing approach focused on creating and publishing relevant, valuable, and high-quality content to attract potential customers and drive profitable action.
Content marketing is all about attracting audiences that become prospective customers. It’s not about showing off how creative you are with your advertising or describing your products and services. Instead, content marketing shows everything transparently on your website.
Here, we list the benefits of content marketing that help you understand why this investment is essential for your future.
1 — Grows Trust in Your Audience or Potential Customers -
People can relate to what you are showing them, whether content, images, or videos. They feel connected with your brand when they see content that helps them solve their problems or pain points and answer their questions. They will love to watch a piece of content from your website or any educational content you post through video. This is a point where they feel your brand is trustworthy and transparent.
To grow trust, content marketing is the best weapon in your arsenal. Research and write; that’s the absolute thing to know the mindset, aim, perspective, and personality of the audiences you want to target. Content marketing strategy is not about selling more products and getting more profit; rather, it can be helpful to people who are drawn to your website. Understanding your audience and providing them with high-quality, personalized, or valuable information shows you care for them. This is the best way to win over your audience.
2 — Attract High-Quality Leads and rank in Search Engines -
Attract high-quality leads coming to your website with the quality of content you prepare. Your brand has more possibilities to attract a visitor to the website and convert them into loyal customers. Search engine optimization is a powerful technique, so with the appropriate search intent and targeted keywords, generates high-quality leads by giving them a reason to find the solutions they are searching for.
People generally use specific terms or keywords to search their query, which is the chance for you to know their decision to purchase.
Want to win search engine rankings? Use high-quality content in providing useful information. The more helpful and robust your content is, the more the chance to engage the audience and get top ranking. By ranking at the top of the search results, your brand can become more visible to everyone. It also drives traffic to your website through search.
Creating high-quality content through content marketing is more beneficial and helps you get where you imagined your brand to be.
3 — Build Brand Awareness -
Everything can help you build awareness for your brand, but content marketing uniquely does that. An appropriate content strategy will do more than get you a higher rank or drive traffic. It will make your audience or customers aware of your brand. Create brand awareness through content marketing strategies. Be original and honest about what you write in your blog posts, articles, or anything you want your readers to know.
Original content has more impact than posting attractive copy content. The content prepared with originality and honesty leads you anywhere your customers are looking for a product or service from you.
People appreciate your content become your brand fans and influence their friends and families to make a purchase. Content is always the cherry on the cake.
When your potential customers feel connected with your brand, they prefer you over anything else. Make sure you give them a solid reason to be by your side.
4 — The Cost-Effective Marketing Strategy -
Creating great content takes time, but it is the most effective and inexpensive way to stand out. Yes, content marketing is the cost-effective marketing strategy you use. It costs less than traditional marketing and advertising to generate leads and drive traffic. It takes time to get the best results, but the time is worth waiting.
It takes some time to see the results of your efforts to prepare high-quality content if you work on SEO. However, cost-effectiveness contributes considerably.
Let your content be your representative and add value to your brand.
Several types of content marketing can assist you in preparing different kinds of content.
Be it your creative images or videos, infographics, memes, customer reviews, ebooks, or any content you use to promote your brand or provide helpful information to your customers, ensure you have researched your audience’s taste. Nothing is more important than being original with your creativity.
Give your audience a reason to stay connected with your brand, make them feel valuable, and gain their trust for the better. Make sure your content covers every detail they want to know or they look for on search engines because content marketing holds the best for your future.
Liveblack is your next destination for every digital marketing need. We are the best digital marketing agency located in Ahmedabad, India, to provide you with services in Marketing, Designing, and Development. We are a team of experienced humans working to give our best each moment.
#Content Marketing#Benefit of Content Marketing#Content Marketing Strategy#quality content#high quality content#Content Startegy#Types of Content Marketing
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Innovative Ad Formats: Beyond Text & Display Ads
Mastering Google Innovative Ad Formats is paramount for staying ahead in competitive marketing. This article delves into the transformative power of cutting-edge advertising formats, exploring strategies that go beyond the conventional to captivate audiences and drive engagement. Discover how Boost Visibility on Google embracing these new avenues can elevate your brand's visibility, foster deeper connections with your target audience, and ultimately lead to a more impactful and successful advertising campaign. Step into the realm of "Innovative Ad Formats: Beyond Text & Display Mastery" and harness the full potential of contemporary advertising techniques. READMORE
#digital marketing#display ad format#marketing strategy#social media advertising#Social Media Ads#Targeting Google Innovative Ad Formats#Innovative Advertising#boosting brand#future of advertising#advertising campaign#marketing startegies
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STREAMLINE YOUR MARKETING CAMPAIGNS WITH AI TOOLS
The takeover of human labor by artificial intelligence is no longer a new phenomenon. The hype surrounding this has been amplified by groundbreaking tools such as ChatGPT. The question of the impact of AI has become increasingly important across all industries. However, the marketing industry will likely see a greater impact than others. AI has the potential to revolutionize marketing operations and challenge traditional marketing approaches. A key concern for marketers is to understand their customers, and AI can make this task much easier. By leveraging large amounts of data, AI can help tailor marketing strategies to be more targeted and effective. This means that marketers can better connect with their customers and provide them with more relevant and personalized experiences.
AI is revolutionizing different aspects of marketing in unique ways. Technology is becoming the ultimate marketing enabler. For instance, predictive analytics helps quickly process vast amounts of data, natural language processing identifies trends, and machine learning enables more efficient decision-making. With AI, you can anticipate your customers' next moves and orchestrate marketing strategies accordingly. Unlike basic programming, AI uses more complex methods that allow it to learn and deliver better results over time, just like humans. Machine learning is a key to understanding customer purchase habits and organizing unstructured data to help accordingly. Deep learning, on the other hand, focuses on more targeted components such as image classification and voice recognition. It allows for the creation of automated chats and auto-creating visual content.
All of these AI technologies combined are making marketing more powerful and targeted. As a result, equipping yourself with AI tools is essential. AI tools enhance marketing efforts through improved ROI, personalized real-time interactions, faster decision-making, and better measurement and analysis.
Effective use of AI tools can assist marketers in collecting targeted information for specific campaigns. This reduces overall marketing expenses, as you're not wasting resources on irrelevant data collection methods. Furthermore, AI can offer profound insights into customer behavior by analyzing large data sets in real-time, which allows for informed decision-making. This approach can improve your ROI by narrowing down your target audience and increasing the likelihood of conversions. To personalize your marketing campaigns, it's important to first understand your customer's preferences and then offer those tailored solutions. With the help of AI, you can easily collect information such as demographics, location, and purchase history, which can help you create personalized marketing messages in real-time. Additionally, AI can use predictive analysis to gain insights into customer behavior and offer relevant suggestions. This is the same technology used by popular platforms like Netflix, Google, and Instagram to provide accurate recommendations. AI enables you to access real-time data and make informed decisions with the help of machine learning. No more sifting through endless sheets of data, as AI brings everything you need to make the right decisions right to your fingertips. Analyzing data and taking measurements can significantly enhance targeted marketing campaigns. By doing so, you can track the success and failure of specific campaigns, and in turn, chooses the most effective approach for your future marketing plans. Without AI, the vast amounts of disorganized data can lead to misleading conclusions, making it difficult to plan for the future.
AI can help with your marketing challenges. Here are some popular AI use cases in digital marketing:
Data analysis - Data analysis is a primary use case of AI that facilitates digital marketing. Machine learning simplifies gathering and analyzing campaign data that would otherwise take a long time.
Automated Decision making - AI uses deep data analysis to suggest strategies for achieving goals.
Natural Language Processing (NLP) - Natural language refers to the language that we use in our everyday communication. Before the advent of AI, computers could only understand and communicate in their binary language. However, with the emergence of AI, computers are now able to use natural language to generate content, facilitate chatbots, and provide personalized experiences.
Media Buying - It can be time-consuming to find the right media spaces to feature content and ads. AI can help by locating relevant media spaces for your target audience.
Content Generation - AI-powered content generation tools are becoming increasingly prevalent. These tools produce error-free content suitable for blog and social media use, and they can help you generate content at scale, including meta-descriptions.
Real- time personalization - You may have noticed that customer experiences are changing in emails, landing pages, and websites to match customer preferences. AI analyzes customers' past purchases, clicked links, and other actions to generate real-time personalized content.
Access to information has been made easier with the use of AI. However, it's important to ensure that the data being used is justifiable. It's crucial to be aware of the limitations of the data being accessed in order to maintain the authenticity of your marketing goals. Moreover, the handling of data with the help of AI may require the expertise of more data scientists on your team. As a result, hiring more data experts will become a crucial part of your marketing strategy as you move forward with AI.
AI has transformed digital marketing approaches for the following types:
Social Media - Social media marketers are utilizing AI tools to automate tasks such as content scheduling, audience engagement, and analytics tracking, while also leveraging user behavior data to inform relevant content creation.
Email - Marketing - AI has revolutionized email marketing by simplifying design, delivery, tracking, and personalization.
SEO - AI has revolutionized the field of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), making it easier for professionals to achieve better results. AI-powered tools are now extensively used for tasks such as traffic analysis, keyword research, and backlink analytics. Additionally, programmatic SEO, a new trend in this field, has further accelerated the use of AI. AI is also used for creating optimized content and Meta descriptions. Some of the leading tools in this area are SEMRush and Surfer SEO.
Pay Per Click - When launching your pay-per-click campaigns, Google Ads, Amazon, and Bing offer AI-powered assistance to help you manage your ads. They provide support with bidding algorithms to prevent overbidding and help you stick to a specific budget. With AI, you can ensure that your bids are relevant, and your ads feature in the right places, which can improve your campaign's performance.
In the modern business world, the advent of artificial intelligence is set to bring about a significant shift in marketing strategies and challenges. With AI infused in marketing, you now have the opportunity to transform your goals and targets and expand your marketing efforts beyond what you could have previously imagined.
Here are the top 5 marketing tools powered by AI.
Market Muse is an AI-powered platform that helps businesses improve their content strategy and drive better results. It offers content analysis and optimization, SEO recommendations, and performance-tracking features.
Jasper.ai is a tool that aids in AI-powered content generation for impactful marketing copies, such as social media captions, product descriptions, blog posts, and company bios. Its best features include a plagiarism checker, text and image AI generation, and brand voice customization.
Phrasee is a marketing tool that optimizes and generates high-performing email subject lines, social media posts, and other digital marketing copy to enhance brand language. Its best features include predictive analytics, brand management, and dynamic content.
Grammarly is a highly accurate AI writing assistant that helps users improve their written communication by providing suggestions for grammar, spelling, style, and clarity. Its best features include grammar and spelling checks, style and clarity suggestions, and real-time feedback.
Growth Bar is a comprehensive SEO tool that provides valuable insights and data-driven recommendations to help businesses improve their online visibility and enhance their organic search rankings. Its best features include keyword research, SEO analysis, and competitor analysis.
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This infographic will help you all to know seven key bullet points for social media strategies.
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INNOVATIVE ONLINE MARKETING STRATEGIES IN AUTOMOBILE SECTOR
The automobile sector has been using innovative online marketing strategies for many years, but recently, it's been taking a more focused approach to online marketing.
Companies have been using social media campaigns to drive sales and reach new customers. Influencer partnerships have helped companies connect with younger generations of buyers who are used to being part of a community on social media.
This sector is one of the most competitive industries in the world, so it's no surprise that companies are constantly looking for new ways to drive sales and grow their businesses.
Innovative online marketing strategies have been used by many automobile companies to achieve these goals. Social media campaigns, influencer partnerships, and more have all been used by automakers to drive sales and increase brand awareness.
The automobile sector has been using innovative online marketing strategies since its inception. While it's clear that social media is a crucial part of most businesses' marketing strategies, it is not enough to keep up with the competition. In order to stay competitive, companies need to expand their digital presence and leverage new tools like influencer partnerships and virtual reality (VR) content.
It's important for companies to understand how social media campaigns can drive sales and how VR content can help them engage with customers. For example, when Toyota launched its first-ever VR experience in Japan, it received so much positive feedback from customers that they decided to roll out the technology across all their stores worldwide.
According to a recent report from Adweek, traditional car companies are focusing on innovative online marketing strategies in an effort to stay competitive with the likes of Tesla and other electric vehicle manufacturers. These companies are also looking for new ways to attract customers who might not be interested in traditional models or who may want something different from what they see on the showroom floor.
The automotive sector has been using innovative online marketing strategies for years, but it's only recently that many of these strategies have been applied specifically to electric vehicles (EVs). In fact, many automakers are investing heavily in both traditional advertising campaigns and influencer partnerships with celebrities like DJ Khaled who promote their products through social media posts
Some of these strategies include creating content that's compatible with the target audience's lifestyle or interests; including messages that target people under 25 years old; partnering with influencers whose loyal following appeals more.
And finally, I'd like to tell you about the oldest magazine i.e, Autocar India that brings you the latest news about upcoming models, as well as specifications and expert reviews.
There are various features on their website where you can choose a car based on your comfort and even compare them, or if you have any questions, you can even ask their expert help.
#automobiles#automotive#motors#innovative startegies#automotivesector#automobilesector#cars#bikes#digitalisation#marketing strategies#innovative strategies#onlinemarketingstrategies
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Apple Earnings, Retirement Strategy, Amazon Earnings, Tech Stocks
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Unexpected strikes and Zoom rises: The importance of having a backup strategy
April 1, 2020, was the day when Eric Yuan, CEO of the popular video conferencing app Zoom published a post on the company’s blog announcing that their app had reached 200 million daily users in March. Of course, Meta’s Thread is now the fastest app to cross the million users mark. However, Zoom’s achievement was different as it represented a 20 times growth in comparison to its previous milestone…
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Social Media Optimization Tips and Tricks | Liveblack
Indeed, social media is a handy and great way to market your business. As everything needs improvisation that levels up the game, social media optimization is there to help you play the lead role in every stage. Social media optimization helps businesses and content creators to analyze, optimize, and audit their performance throughout all social media platforms.
Understanding every bit of having a social presence requires optimization that will get the most out of it. How to reach the maximum audience? How to generate more leads? How to prepare social media posts that drive traffic to your website? What drives people to the landing page from your social media account? How to increase visibility? So much to ask and so much to learn from each passing day. There is only one answer to all your questions - social media optimization.
With all these questions, listening to these heavy and technical words and terms sounds scary, right? But calm yourself down as we have listed the tactics and tips for social media optimization that guide you in the right direction.
In this digital age, social media is a gateway to entering the world where every human has different interests. This gateway allows you to target your audience the way you want. Keep them busy with engaging and attractive content, and let them know what you are offering and what benefits they'll get by using your products and services.
Through social media optimization, achieve better results for more leads, better performance, increased followers growth, more sales and clicks, higher engagement, etc. Let us take you to the main points for why we are here.
Here are the techniques that will help you improve daily through social media optimization in digital marketing.
1 - Engagement Optimization
To post on social media has some rules you follow. You can post any time; however, to attract new visitors or potential customers, you need to see when your audience is more likely to prefer checking their social media platforms or your content. There are certain times when you get the most views on your posts where posts get comments and saved by the visitors. Make your content loved by everyone by posting them at the right time to make your hard work worth it.
After posting content for some time, analyze and optimize your posts to get insights into how many people read them and at what time and land on the page you want them to check. Research is creating a trail to slowly but surely expand your business consistently.
How to engage your audience? It is an easy question to answer. Nowadays, getting in touch with customers is easier as you have the best weapon by your side - social media. Ask them interesting questions, go for a poll, and let them have a fun ride while going through your stories or posts. Let them know you care and are ready to serve high-quality products by approaching them with quality content, images, and videos.
SMO services guide you to have the best social media presence that helps your website rank higher and is flooded with orders and organic traffic.
Another important point in the engagement optimization section is to know when to post and how many posts you need to post weekly or monthly. Try to stay active on each social media platform you use. If you crosspost, ensure your images or videos are high quality. The profile picture you want to show the world has to be related to your brand identity.
It may not interest anyone to see boring images or a single image that isn't good enough to catch their attention. Develop a practice to prepare appealing content, use relatable hashtags, high-quality images or videos, and appropriate keywords so your business can get found by your audience.
Your social media Bio or About is the key to getting found on different social media platforms. Write a bio relatable to your business and nothing else that wastes the word limit of the bio.
It would be best to take care of these things to get noticed on social media. Social media optimization makes everything perfect for your business or brand to flourish.
2 - Performance Optimization
The ultimate goal of social media optimization is to enhance the brand's performance overall. Performance optimization betters your social presence through key points like audience engagement, understanding the competitors, analyzing the posts you publish, etc. there are tools available online to help you get an idea of how your posts perform, your audience's behavior, type of content you post, your social media account align with your business goals or not. and check and review everything posted to date. Analytics tools guide you with performance optimization, such as whether you are on the right track to accomplish your goals, are the posts appropriate for engagement, whether your audience finds your content relatable, and many other factors that help you perform well.
If you post across multiple platforms, be consistent with everything, especially the quality of images and content, use relevant keywords in bio and SEO-based captions, and optimize links with UTMs to track your customer's behavior.
All in all, the performance of your social presence helps you get more leads, sales, traffic to your website, and conversions. Optimize your performance to build a more substantial impression for your business.
3 - Social Media Strategy Optimization
A well-planned strategy is necessary to achieve your goals. Just as you need a marketing plan or strategy to get an idea about how to reach the maximum number of people to grow your business, social media strategies help you generate leads, cover more profit, be liable to your potential customers, and attract new visitors as well.
Use trendy content and clear images for everyone to read and understand quickly. Social media strategy optimization helps you prepare a plan or guide to keep you focused on your goals. Each step is simplified to achieve the expected growth and get the results that will satisfy you.
Optimize everything you post on social media, like content, images, videos, or anything you share with your audience. Use the right keywords in content, high-quality images, and videos, plan when posts get more reach, how to drive traffic to your website, etc.
Many businesses lack strong social media strategies, which keeps them at the bottom. Don't let poor social media presence and plans stop you from reaching the success you imagined.
4 - Profile Optimization
Each social media platform where you want to be, make sure it perfectly displays your business. Create a username with a keyword related to your business; for example, if you are a writer, mention writing-related words in your username. Also, check the profile pictures you post on social media, especially put a logo in the image so that people can easily find out. Consistency across all platforms makes it easier for your audience to recognize you.
Let your bio be the best of friends to achieve the goals you've desired. Research keywords relevant to your business, and also get an idea of the search volume a keyword has. Know the keywords people use to reach a particular business and add them to your bio to be visible to everyone.
Every little thing and detail matters the most if you want your business to be successful. Social media optimization is always there to guide you, make your business stronger day by day, and let no hurdles pull you down. Social media is the way, nowadays, to let everyone know about your business; it's an easy way to communicate, capture, and connect with your audience but ensure you have perfectly planned strategies.
Liveblack is the destination you are searching for, for all your marketing and branding needs. We are one of the top digital marketing agencies based in Ahmedabad, India, to help you achieve your goals and dedicate ourselves to your business growth.
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WHAT IS SEO?
SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It’s the practice of increasing both the quality and quantity of website traffic, as well as exposure to your brand, through non-paid (also known as "organic") search engine results.
Despite the acronym, SEO is as much about people as it is about search engines themselves. It’s about understanding what people are searching for online, the answers they are seeking, the words they’re using, and the type of content they wish to consume. Knowing the answers to these questions will allow you to connect to the people who are searching online for the solutions you offer.
If knowing your audience’s intent is one side of the SEO coin, delivering it in a way search engine crawlers can find and understand is the other. In this guide, expect to learn how to do both.
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Website : - https://deltainfotech.com.au/
#website#webdevelopment#seo#marketing#business#brand#computer repairs canberra#web designers#seo services#networking services#digital marketing#marketing agency canberra#content marketing startegy#brand agency#brand studio
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This content marketing complete guide has everything you need to know to boost traffic, generate quality leads, sales and grow your business.
Are you efficiently use content marketing to reach out to your clients and build your business?
Everyone is coming to recognise how powerful content marketing can be, from little businesses to startups to large organisations.
However, not everyone knows what it is, how it works, or (most crucially) how to make it work.
Content is one of the most effective strategies to boost brand awareness among a specific audience these days.
According to the CMI, content marketing enhances engagement and is a fantastic lead generating technique for 72 percent of marketers.
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Marketing & Communication Startegy | Filtgy
Filtgy provides high-level marketing communications strategy for companies of all sizes to help them achieve their unique business goals.Successful marketing requires sound strategy. Filtgy provides high-level marketing communications strategy for companies of all sizes to help them achieve their unique business goals. Our team members have worked as entrepreneurs and executive-level communicators at multinational companies and have the market and industry knowledge to deliver effective, creative and custom strategic counsel.
Visit us: https://filtgy.com/marketing-communications-strategy/
#Marketing & Communication#Marketing & Communication Startegy#social media marketing#Social Media Advertising#seo services#seo agency india#search engine optimisation company#filtgy digital marketing
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The Story of Live Action BL in Japan
This is an extra post to accompany the history of BL post I did earlier.
Japan has had live action BL long before Thailand entered the picture. It was however mostly melancolic stories or manga adaptations, until their own particular boom happened. I make a difference between what I would call LGBTQ+ representation and BL Live Action, because even though they have existed parallely they are fundamentally different in their conception. Here is an interview with the curator of an exhibition that was held in Japan about the history of Japanese Queer Cinema.
The evolution of Japanese BL Live Action has been very slow, and mostly influenced by manga. It is still not a big market, but it has improved a lot in the most recent years. This is my attempt to put it into phases:
The indie like movies and bad manga adaptations
Let’s start with Boys Love (a movie), shall we?
It is the year 2006 and up to this point there has been a small boom of gay stories in the 1990′s (the first Tokyo International Lesbian & Gay Film & Video Festival was held in 1992 me thinks this might have sprung the yaoi debates). In the 2000's, we're at the start of a new little boom on BL type movies being made. Many of which would be directly released in DVD, with a constant melancholic and tragic approach to love stories between young men.
Homosexual love is only attarctive to the mainstream if it’s painful. Like typical japanese imposible loves that are explored because of the passion and innevitable tragedy (it’s a japanese trope of almost any kind of romance movie, up to these days). its the intensity of feelings and the poetry of it all. In Boys Love we see those elements that are now very common in BL manga. Straight men falling in love with beautiful young boys and loving them until their tragic end. The movie was released in theatres and was successful enough to get a sequel. Here is a very good review of the movie, to know more about it.
A number of similar movies (with happier endings) follow through. Then enters the Takumi kun series. Based off one of the most popular yaoi novel (and potentially the first live action novel/manga adaptation of BL), it has all the June tropes: Traumatized feminine Takumi, raped by his older brother when he was young, has developped an abberation to human touch which prevents him from making friends. He goes to a boarding school for rich kids where he shares a dorm room with Gii, the most popular kid on the premises, who has fallen in love with him. And it is through that love that Takumi gets over his illness and heals from his past. It was such a success in the BLsphere that it got 4 more movies. I believe it is the bane of @absolutebl existence.
After the first Takumi-kun movie, the production of BL type movies, or adaptations of manga gets a boost. We go from no more than 3 movies a year to 8 in 2008, ie:
Kindan no Koi
Ai no Kotodama
Taiikukan Baby
And so it continues. When a manga is popular enough it either gets a Live Action, a drama CD (voice actors record the manga dialogues) or/and a series of OVAs (Original Video Animation). Because that’s how they do marketing in Japan. I believe most, if not all, of these movies go straight to DVD. It’s a treat for the fans.
The beginning of the shift
As the manga source starts to evolve, so does the live actions. Japanese society starts being more aware of the LGBT (as the term is used for business startegy purposes). As it’s all about what is going to sell, slowly, a slight neutral realism starts to be felt. Melancoly starts to be replaced with happier moods.
The first adaptation I genienly enjoyed at the time was Seven Days, 2015. A 2 part movie, adapted from the manga, with a very simple story (still no characters properly defined as gay, but maybe they could count as bi?)
While more LGBTQ+ movies get made, the BL Live Action movies remain in the same vein. Adpating what is popular and sticking to the tropes of the time. For example, in 2017 we get simultaneously:
BL - Hidamari ga Kikoeru. A loud and energetic college student becomes friends with a hearing impared classmate, as he helps him take notes for class.
LGBT - Close Knit. An 11 year old girl gets tossed aside by her mother and goes to live with her uncle, who is dating a transgender woman.
The Middle Aged Man Phenomenon
Have you wondered why office settings are so popular in japanese BL? Well, it is mostly Ossan’s Love fault in my opinion.
Besides office romances being a staple of japanese tv dramas, in 2016 two major mainstream actors (Tanaka Kei and Yoshida Kotaro) participate in a small short film about a salaryman who discovers his boss is in love with him. A simple comedy filled with misunderstandings and funny shenanigans. As the response to it was very positive, they decided to turn it into a full flegged series. And so, Ossan’s Love comes out on prime television (TV Asahi) for all to see. It is the first time we see a story like this being shown in a mainstream channel, for all and anyone to see.
A year later after the success of Ossan’s Love we get the wonderful Kinou Nani Tabeta/What Di you Eat Yesterday? (2019), which would not have been possible without Ossan’s Love. There was confidence that there was a market for such a story. Followed by the OL movie: Ossan’s Love: Love or Dead. Which was later followed by a horrible horrible second season that nobody wanted. On this year too, Mood Indigo comes out. A sequel to The Novelist/Pornographer, which would secure it’s popularity. It later got a second season.
We are now in a second boom of interest in queer stories. And the number of movies and tv shows grow. Some of the most known:
Novel adaptation - Fujoshi Ukkari gay ni kokoru
LGBT Movies - His
Dramas - Life: Senjou no Bokura
Queer voices have been increasingly loud and, in 2015, two municipalities put in place a partnership to acknowledge same sex relationships (not recognized outside of those municipalities unfortunately).
And so, start mixing the homophobia free idealized stories, with more diverse queer content, with the harsh realities of LGBTQ+ people, and the cinematic interest of the filmmakers/directors.
The rise of the salaryman and the thai breakthrought
Thanks to the appeal of middle aged men, Japan now knows there’s a market to be had in producing BLs, so the adaptations sprout like mushrooms. The ground is ready to bear fruit, and so enters thailand with the big success of 2gether at the beginning of 2020.
Japan got to have the movie screened in their theatres. Thailand has broken the Japanese market barrier, as soon as the borders open after the pandemic, fanmeetings are held there one after the other.
And then, we get Cherry Magic in late 2020, which continues to cement that the current japanese BL boom is still going strong.
The Aftermath
The production of BL shows and movies reaches its peak and we get 26 (shows and movies) in 2022. Movies, specials and second seasons are being made.
From Utsukushii Kare 2021 to Strange 2023. Old and new manga gets an adapation and more queer representation grows in media overall.
The story of LGBT representation in shows in Japan
As an extra, I want to put here a few examples of how queer characters, and stories have entered the mainstream of japanese tv dramas. Many mainstream actors have also taken upon portraying such characters.
Pretty Proofreader (2016) - featured a gay side character, not relevant to the plot.
My Brother’s Husband (2018) mini series - adaptation of Gengoroh Tagame’s manga about a man overcoming his homophobia through getting to know his bother’s husband
Life As A Girl (2018) mini series - the life of a lesbian trans woman
Ie Uru Onna S2 (2019) - one episode features different types of LGBT people who want to buy a house and the difficulties they face. Also had some type of side gay stoyline (a little queerbaity)?
Ore no Sukato, doko Itta? (2019) - a gay man who dresses as a woman becomes a teacher at a highschool and helps with his is student’s problems.
Special mention to Residential Complex (2018).
A drama that featured 4 families living in the same residential unit, each with their own fundamental problems. The father in the traditional japanese family was unemployed, the man engaged to a younger second wife who wanted no children ends up having to take care of his son from his previous marriage, the young newlyweds that are eager to have kids can’t concieve and the single architect is actually living with his boyfriend. It was a show that had worked with an LGBT organization to make a faithful protrayal of LGBT realities.
Final Thoughts
Here is a list of all Japanese BL and Queer media, Japanese BL list. I recommend to check it out to see the variety of adaptations being made today. It is intersting to see the differences in plot in the shows that are adapting current manga (Our Dining Table) and those adapting older manga (Candy Color Paradox). There is also a lot of queer movies and shows worth checking out. Here are my recommendations:
Kamisama no Ekohiiki (series)
Both Me and Him are the Grooms (movie)
I think it is great that Japan is intergrating queer stories and voices to their BLs, as well as adapting more content to the screen. It is a very exciting moment to be living through, but it still feels like it might go away just as fast as it came. Japan is a very conservative country, that embraces change so very slowly. Queer vocies are making noise, but they have yet to manage to make their government listen. Japan is very setback in this sense.
I do no think Japan will be able to have a BL market similar to Thailand for its live action adaptations any time soon. They stick to what they know, which sometimes can be very good and others, bad.
I do hope for BL to keep on doing what it does best for society: subtly normalizing queer lives so that conservative people start welcoming the idea that they're just regular people (who deserve rights, come on Japan).
Hopefully we’re headed there.
#history of bl#bl history#history of japanese bl live action#this was the quicker one to make#the yaoi debates require more research#but it will be the next post in this series#I hope you had a fun read#I hope I did a good job#I don't know as much on this subject but I did want to make a post to give some context to why japanese bl is as it is
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