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Allegation of corruption and criminal conspiracy.On 20 January 1998 Central Bureau of Investigation filed cases against New Delhi Television #NDTV managing director #PrannoyRoy, former director general of Doordarshan R. Basu and five other top officials of Doordarshan under Section 120-B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for criminal conspiracy and under the Prevention of Corruption Act. According to the #CBI charge-sheet, Doordarshan suffered a loss of over Rs 35.2 million due to the "undue favours" shown to NDTV as its programme The World This Week (TWTW) was put in 'A' category instead of 'special A' category.#Radiatapes controversy.In November 2010, OPEN magazine carried a story which reported transcripts of some of the telephone conversations of #NiraRadia with senior journalists, politicians, and corporate houses, many of whom have denied the allegations. The Central Bureau of Investigation has announced that they have 5,851 recordings of phone conversations by Radia, some of which outline Radia's attempts to broker deals in relation to the 2G spectrum sale. The tapes appear to demonstrate how Radia attempted to use some media persons including #NDTV's #BarkhaDutt to influence the decision to appoint A. Raja as telecom minister. She always denied her role in this episode with stating her role as simply error of judgment. #BarkhaDutt is being investigated by the #CBI.Allegation of tax fraud.#NDTV, through its foreign subsidiaries, is alleged to have violated Indian tax and corporate laws. NDTV has denied these allegations.The Sunday Guardian ran a story which exposed the NDTV's financial misdemeanours and malpractices in connivance with ICICI Bank. "NDTV-ICICI loan chicanery saved Roys" provides details of how NDTV's major stake holders raised funds by misdeclaration of the value of shares in NDTV. NDTV has denied the allegations and the NDTV CEO replied to the Sunday Guardian along with the threat of "criminal defamation".On 19 November 2015 the #ED served ₹2,030 crore (US$300 million) notice to #NDTV for alleged violations under the #FEMA act, however the company said it has been advised that the allegations are not "legally tenable".#CommonwealthGames Contract.On 5 August 2011 Comptroller and Auditor General of India's report on XIX Commonwealth Games was tabled in Parliament of India. In section 14.4.2 of the report, CAG alleged that while awarding contracts worth Rs 37.8 million for production & broadcasting of commercials for promoting CWG-2010 to NDTV & CNN-IBN, the Commonwealth Games Organizing Committee followed an arbitrary approach. Proposals were considered in an ad hoc manner, as and when a proposal was received; no form of competitive tendering was adopted. The #CAG further said in its report that, "We had no assurance about the competitiveness of the rates quoted by these channels and the need and usefulness of these proposals. From March 2010 to June 2010, the entire pre games publicity and sponsorship publicity was done only on #NDTV & CNN-IBN.Suit against #TAMIndia.This section contains information of unclear or questionable importance or relevance to the article's subject matter.News broadcaster company sued television audience measurement company, #TAMIndia and its global parent firms for over a billion dollars in the Supreme Court of New York, alleging TAM of manipulating ratings in return for bribes to its officials.YOU HAVE TO BE A VERY IMPORTANT PERSON to celebrate a business milestone at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. But considering that Radhika and #PrannoyRoy launched their 24-hour news channel, more than 15 years ago, at the prime minister’s official residence, it seemed apt that, in 2013, the programme to mark the twenty-fifth year of its parent company, New Delhi Television Private Limited, was held at the president’s.The Roys organised a glittering event on a December evening that year, attended by some of India’s most famous and powerful people, many of whom the network was felicitating as the country’s “greatest global living legends.” In attendance were titans of industry (Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata, Indra Nooyi, NR Narayana Murthy), sporting legends (Sachin Tendulkar, Kapil Dev, Leander Paes) and film stars (Amitabh Bachchan, Rajinikanth, Waheeda Rahman, Shah Rukh Khan). Once this galaxy of guests was seated, #PrannoyRoy, dressed in a sleek black bandhgala, stepped up to a lectern.“Couple of days ago, I asked Radhika, the founder of #NDTV, what’s kept NDTV going for 25 years,” Prannoy began in his relaxed drawl, a slight smile flickering across his face. Though he is probably the channel’s most recognisable personality, he regularly makes it a point to remind people that the company was founded by his wife, and that he joined her after. “She just said one word: trust,” Prannoy continued. “Your trust. And I am here tonight on behalf of everybody at #NDTV to thank every single one of you for your trust in us.”Two years later, on the evening of 8 November this year, Prannoy called on the audience’s trust again, seated behind his anchor’s desk at NDTV’s studio in south Delhi. This time, he was distinctly less at ease. “Let me start with an explanation and an apology,” he said.His channel had made two mistakes. First, its exit poll had forecast a victory for the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition in the Bihar legislative elections, which went on to be won by the Rashtriya Janata Dal-Janata Dal (United)-Congress combine. “There are statistical errors that shouldn’t make them be taken too seriously,” Prannoy said, jabbing the air awkwardly as he spoke, his words tripping over each other. “You get it right, you get it wrong sometimes. That’s the life of a pollster.” This was true. Though exit polls are ostensibly more accurate than pre-election surveys, they can, nevertheless, be skewed for a number of reasons, including sampling errors and dishonest responses from voters.The second error was far more grave. At around half past nine that morning, as the counting of votes had just begun, Prannoy declared that the BJP-led coalition had already won, with a majority tally of more than 140 seats. He then proceeded to moderate a discussion with his panellists, analysing the reasons for this supposedly decisive victory. An hour later, it became clear that he was utterly wrong. The misstep was particularly embarrassing given that Prannoy’s first forays into journalism, in the 1980s, had been as an election analyst; Dorab Sopariwala, a colleague from those days, was one of his guests on the show. Prannoy and his panellists had the unenviable task of reversing all the explanations they had conjured up.On air that evening, Prannoy attempted to explain why things had gone so wrong. “On every counting day, all news channels get data from one agency,” he said. “Again, a very globally respected agency. This morning, the first data that came in to all the news channels was completely wrong.”Although this sounded reasonable, it was, in fact, misleading. The agency in question, Nielsen, subsequently disputed Prannoy’s claim. Numbers may have initially shown a lead for the BJP, but, as an elections expert, Prannoy had to know well that a trend can shift, especially early in the counting process. Other channels, such as CNN-IBN, and even the usually overzealous Times Now, had been more cautious before declaring a winner. Prannoy later won plaudits on social media for his apology, but he had not even acknowledged his blunder.“For NDTV, and for me,” Prannoy said, rounding off his remarks, “our aim is to try to bring you the most objective and accurate news as quickly as possible. So thank you for trusting us, and staying with us.”Prannoy wasn’t exaggerating NDTV’s reputation as a reliable broadcaster. Launched in the 1980s, it was India’s first independent news network, entering the field at a time when the government-run Doordarshan had a monopoly over television content. Beginning with one show on that channel, #NDTV expanded the range of Indian television news, introducing international standards in reportage and presentation. In the process, it gained an early lead in viewership ratings, and dominated the advertising market. NDTV passed on its success to shareholders after the company went public in 2004. As the company grew over the years, from producing one show to launching multiple channels, the Roys groomed a set of reporters and anchors who are today among the country’s most acclaimed and best known television journalists.But even as it adhered by and large to its core editorial principles—rigorous reportage, measured presentation, the absence of overt bias—threats to NDTV’s editorial dominance soon emerged from within its own ranks. Rival channels, some of them led by former staffers, began to overtake the network in the race for ratings, and hoovered up precious advertising revenue.While the network fought a losing battle to retain primacy, it plunged into acute financial distress. In 2008, as the media industry reeled from the global recession, NDTV found itself haemorrhaging money. Towards the end of the decade, the network fired hundreds of staffers in an effort to cut costs.In January this year, a stockbroker named Sanjay Dutt filed a writ petition in the Delhi High Court against the enforcement directorate, or the ED, and the directorate general of income tax investigation. Both are law enforcement agencies: the former is responsible for investigating and prosecuting crimes related to foreign funds and money laundering, and the latter deals with violations of tax laws.Dutt, the director of a financial-services firm named #QuantumSecurities, owned around 125,000 shares in #NDTV, representing a 0.2 percent stake. In 2013, he had filed complaints with these agencies, and other government bodies, alleging that NDTV and its promoters had violated a number of laws. In this year’s writ petition—a request for intervention from a court—he alleged that both agencies failed to act on his complaints.Along with the government bodies, Radhika and Prannoy Roy are also named as respondents in Dutt’s petition. So is Radhika Roy #PrannoyRoy Holdings Private Limited, or #RRPR, an entity that the Roys set up in 2005, and in which they placed shares of the company beginning in mid 2008. This company proved to be central to a convoluted maze of transactions that the Roys carried out from 2008 onward.The affidavits that the two agencies filed in response to Dutt’s petition make for remarkable reading. Both told the court that investigations into NDTV and its promoters have been underway since 2011, in response to a complaint by the BJP parliamentarian Yashwant Sinha. The documents reveal that the Roys are being probed for contraventions of tax laws and laws involving foreign money.#NDTV has not been charged for any of the violations identified in the documents. Nevertheless, these investigations raise the question of whether, despite its reputation as a reliable company, NDTV’s financial core may be rotting.WHEN PRANNOY ROY WAS A YOUNG BOY, his grandfather bestowed on him the nickname “Tempest.” It seems a curious choice of moniker in hindsight, given Prannoy’s famously unflappable anchoring style.That self-assured manner was well in evidence when Prannoy appeared on Indian television screens in 1988 to introduce viewers to a new show, produced by the company he and #RadhikaRoy had set up that same year. “We hope in this show to bring you an analysis of the main world news events of the week,” Prannoy began. “A glimpse of the personalities involved, and, of course, the best of sports.” He wore a grey suit and a shiny tie, and sat in front of a wall of television screens. This was the future of Indian television news.The news magazine programme, called The World This Week, had been commissioned by the director general of Doordarshan, Bhaskar Ghose. The journalist Nalin Mehta wrote in his 2008 book India on Television that Ghose had been handpicked by the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi “to turn things around for an Indian television glasnost”—by infusing the public broadcaster with fresh talent and ideas. Ghose signed up the Roys, paying them Rs 2 lakh per episode.The Roys, both from Kolkata, met as school students in Dehradun in the 1960s—she at Welham Girls, he at the Doon School. They moved to London to study further, married, and then settled in Delhi to make their careers. Radhika worked on the desk for the Indian Express and India Today. Prannoy, meanwhile, obtained a doctorate in economics, taught at the Delhi School of Economics, and then turned to election analysis, along with his fellow economist Ashok Lahiri, and the market researchers KMS Ahluwalia and Dorab Sopariwala.After taking up Ghose’s offer, the Roys plunged into the media business, albeit with a limited sense of what the future held. The government was still wary of allowing private players in domestic news broadcasting, so only allowed The World This Week to cover international events. “They were terribly clear that you couldn’t do anything in India, or anything close to it,” Mehta quoted Prannoy as saying.Despite this restriction, the show was a “phenomenal success,” Mehta wrote. Until then, he pointed out, viewers had only seen Doordarshan bulletins, which “consisted solely of stiff news readers reading out the news in highly bureaucratised English or Hindi. When pictures were used it was only for a few seconds, and often even these were still pictures.” The Roys “exposed Indian audiences for the first time to international news television practices,” with Prannoy “introducing each story in an easy conversational style, followed by a pre-packaged story using the best pictures with a voice-over to match the visuals.”In December 1989, the year after the company was founded, Prannoy presented an election results show, a precursor to the kind of wall-to-wall coverage that is the norm today. In it, he tracked the defeat of the Congress under Rajiv Gandhi by the National Front coalition, led by the Janata Dal’s VP Singh. Until then, results had been limited to official announcements through the news. This was different—it conveyed the very mood of the nation to viewers.That year also marked a shift in the Roys’ agreement with #Doordarshan. Instead of the channel paying #NDTV for each show it produced, the company became a producer in its own right, paying Doordarshan a fee and selling advertising directly. This boosted the Roys’ profile: from being hired talent, they became media entrepreneurs.But it also led to the Roys’ first run-in with the law. In 1997, a parliamentary committee examined Doordarshan’s finances and found “irregularities” in its dealings with #NDTV—specifically, with regard to the access the company was given to the channel’s technology, and the advertising rates it had been allowed to charge. In 1998, the Central Bureau of Investigation, #CBI filed a first information report against Prannoy and officials of #Doordarshan, including #RathikantBasu, who was the channel’s director general from 1993 to 1996. In 2013, however, the #CBI filed a closure report in a court, which accepted it and quashed all charges in the case.#NDTV produced The World This Week until 1995, when another opportunity presented itself. The government had launched a new channel, which was to carry a mix of programming including feature films and documentaries. NDTV was signed on to produce a daily news bulletin called News Tonight. The Roys broadcast their first show live, but Prannoy recounted in a speech earlier this year that “someone in the PM’s office heard the word ‘live’ and reacted to it like a four-letter word.” Orders flew between government offices, he said, to “stop this private news from being live.” Subsequently, NDTV began recording the show ten minutes ahead of the scheduled broadcast.When India’s media market opened up in the 1990s, NDTV found a foreign investor, signing up with Rupert Murdoch’s #Starnetwork to produce programmes for the channel #StarPlus. Two years later, NDTV and Star signed a five-year deal to launch and run the 24-hour news channel #StarNews. It was inaugurated in February 1998, just ahead of a general election, by Inder Kumar Gujral, then the prime minister of India. An India Today report from that year noted that “a beaming Gujral threw open the doors of 7 Race Course Road,” his official residence, for the event.Indian regulations, even today, dictate that a foreign company can only be a minority partner in a news channel in India. This gave NDTV, then the country’s most prominent private news entity, a powerful bargaining chip with Star, which was then headed in India by Rathikant Basu. In a 2002 piece, the journalist Sucheta Dalal described the Roys’ arrangement with the network as a “sweetheart deal,” in which NDTV was paid “a whopping $20 million a year,” and retained “total control over editorial content and copyright over programming even though Star pays a big chunk of the cost.”This was #NDTV’s heyday. Star’s money gave the Roys an advantage over other channels, such as Aaj Tak and Zee. It allowed them to buy better equipment, produce slicker graphics, and, most importantly, hire the best talent. The Roys’ team by now included many of the journalists who would go on to form the core of #NDTV—among them were Sonia Verma (now Sonia Singh), Vikram Chandra, #BarkhaDutt, #RajdeepSardesai, #SreenivasanJain, #VishnuSom, and #MayaMirchandani. Former NDTV staffers told me the Roys described their company as a “family.” They did not have a human resources department, and made all the hires themselves.Vikram Chandra is the son of Yogesh Chandra, a former director general of civil aviation, himself the son-in-law of Govind Narain, a former home and defence secretary and governor of Karnataka. One of the NDTV’s top business heads, KVL Narayana Rao, is the son of KV Krishna Rao, a former army general who also served as governor of Jammu and Kashmir and other states. Rajdeep Sardesai is the son of the cricketer Dilip Sardesai, and the son-in-law of Doordarshan’s Bhaskar Ghose. Barkha Dutt’s mother, Prabha Dutt, was a senior journalist. #ArnabGoswami is the son of Manoranjan Goswami, an army officer and BJP member; Manoranjan’s brother Dinesh was a union law minister in the VP Singh government. Sreenivasan Jain is the son of the economist Devaki Jain, and LC Jain, a well-known activist, who served as a member of the Planning Commission and as India’s high commissioner to South Africa. Another early hire, Nidhi Razdan, is the daughter of MK Razdan, who has been the editor-in-chief of the Press Trust of India. Vishnu Som is the son of Himachal Som, a former senior diplomat. Chetan Bhattacharjee, a managing editor, is the grandson of Nirmal Mukarjee, a former cabinet secretary and a governor of Punjab.Sandeep Bhushan, who worked with NDTV for almost a decade, told me it seemed more than a mere coincidence that the channel should hire so many “babalog”—people with bureaucratic connections. Bhushan said that he applied to work with the channel around the year 2000, and gave a “damn good interview,” in spite of which he was rejected. “The next time, I went with clout,” he said. Armed with a reference from a bureaucrat, he reapplied for the same post soon after. He was hired.The channel played a part in shaping the politics of the day. A senior journalist who was a crucial part of the Roys’ newsroom for nearly 15 years told me that after launching a 24-hour channel, NDTV would often get complaints from politicians who were not invited to its panels. Everyone wanted to be seen on the channel, he said, and there would be fights among party leaders over who would appear on #NDTV’s shows.In an essay for the book Television in India, Mehta wrote that since the medium required a face for every story, some leaders began to be seen as “credible representatives of their parties or governments, irrespective of their actual place within the hierarchy.” Appearing on television “often helps political careers,” he wrote. “It helps to be seen by cadres and to be seen by senior party leaders.”The senior #NDTV journalist recalled an anecdote from the late 1990s that showed how upcoming politicians could use television to make their presence felt. It was a practice, he said, that guests who appeared on the 9 pm English show “Star Week,” hosted by Barkha Dutt and Rajdeep Sardesai, usually stayed back in the studio to appear on the Hindi show “Ravivar,” hosted by Pankaj Pachauri and Rupali Tewari. Ahead of Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s historic bus ride to Lahore, in February 1999, Jaitley visited the studio to speak on behalf of the party.“Then Narendra Modi came for the first time,” the senior journalist told me. #Modi appeared undaunted by the task he had been assigned, of presenting a party view that diverged from that of its popular prime minister. The host said, “Atali-ji ne yeh bola hai, Atal-ji ne woh bola hai” (Atal-ji said this, Atal-ji said that), the journalist recounted. Modi replied, “‘Atal-ji toh bolte rehte hain’”—Atal-ji keeps saying things. Modi “lambasted” Vajpayee for the upcoming trip, the journalist recalled. “He was very good,” the journalist said, adding that he thought after the show, “this person will go far.”Despite the political jockeying for spots on its shows, #NDTV occasionally bore the brunt of the establishment’s ire, too. Its coverage of the 2002 Gujarat pogrom prompted one such instance. Mehta wrote in his book that after the violence broke out, channels largely refrained from identifying the community to which most victims belonged—a practice inherited from print journalism. #NDTV, then under Star News, took the decision to state that the victims were Muslims. #BarkhaDutt, who covered the violence, later made a powerful defence of this decision, saying that naming the “community under siege” was not just important to the story, “it was in fact the story, revealing as it did a prejudiced administrative and political system that was happy to stand by and watch.”In response to the channel’s coverage, the BJP government in #Gujarat, under Narendra Modi, blacked it out in the state. Mehta contrasted NDTV’s bold stance to that of Zee, which on 1 March 2002 aired an interview with Jaitley, then the union law minister, in which “the anchor … assured the minister of his network’s support.” In his account of the interview in the magazine Seminar, Rajdeep Sardesai left the network unnamed, but wrote that “one channel openly ‘celebrated’ on air the state government’s decision to censor or blackout channels, with the anchor virtually justifying the line that the media was responsible for inflaming passions.”BY 2002, ITS DEAL WITH STAR was coming to an end, NDTV fell out with the channel over negotiations for a new contract. The Roys broke away to launch their own 24-hour news channels over the next two years: NDTV 24×7 in English, and NDTV India in Hindi. (Its Hindi journalists were also stars, among them Vinod Dua, Pankaj Pachauri, Dibang, Rupali Tewari, Naghma Sahar and Ravish Kumar.) The senior journalist told me that these moves were funded, in large part, by the money NDTV had earned over the years, while investors, such as Morgan Stanley, also put in funds. The broadcast media industry was then a “sunshine sector,” the journalist said, and NDTV was a big brand. Investors were willing to bet on the network’s future.THROUGHOUT NDTV’S EXISTENCE, the Roys have exerted complete control over the network’s editorial vision and its business strategy. But a chain of transactions, beginning in 2007, which is mentioned in the recent Delhi High Court affidavits, suggest that their influence may have waned considerably.That year, Radhika and Prannoy Roy decided to buy back a 7.73-percent stake held by another shareholding entity, GA Global Investments. Promoters may have different reasons for buying back shares, such as if they anticipate that their price will rise, or want to further consolidate their holding in the company. Often, as it was in this case, the deal is struck at a price higher than the market rate— #NDTV’s stock was hovering at around Rs 400 at the time, but the Roys bought shares back at Rs 439.As per Indian stock market regulations, this triggered an “open offer,” which allows other shareholders to sell stake—up to a prescribed limit—to the promoters at the same price. These regulations are meant to ensure that when a large shareholder strengthens her ownership, minority shareholders are given the option to exit if they feel their investment will be affected.Even while the open offer was on, the Roys entered into another deal, in March 2008, which possibly violated capital markets regulations. They signed an agreement with Goldman Sachs to sell the investment bank up to 14.99 percent of the NDTV stake they held. The deal also gave Goldman Sachs special rights in the company, including the right to nominate a director on the board. This deal was not declared to any of the authorities or shareholders, and the transactions, which eventually resulted in #GoldmanSachs gaining 14.6 percent of NDTV’s stock, were presented as open-market sales. Oddly, one director that Goldman Sachs nominated said in a letter—responding to a letter from the stockbroker #SanjayDutt—that he was a “nominee of certain funds managed by #GoldmanSachs which were invested in the Company.” Whose money had come through the bank remains unclear.As they prepared to buy back stock, the Roys found themselves short of money. To plug the shortfall, in July 2008, the Roys borrowed Rs 501 crore from India Bulls Financial Services. The loan marked the beginning of a chain of borrowing that haunts the Roys’ account books to this day.The chief cause for the troubles that ensued was bad timing. As the Roys were carrying out the open offer, the housing loan crisis hit the United States and triggered collapses across global markets. NDTV’s stock took a beating, like those of many other companies, globally and in India. From Rs 400 at the end of July 2008, the share price crashed to less than Rs 100 by the end of October. The Roys watched the value of the shares they had just bought nosedive. It was like the floor had collapsed even as they tried to build a house.To repay the #IndiaBulls loan, the Roys took a loan from ICICI, of Rs 375 crore, at an annual interest rate of 19 percent. To obtain this loan they offered as collateral their entire personal shareholding, as well as that of #RRPR, a total of 61.45 percent of #NDTV’s stock.A December 2010 report in the newspaper Sunday Guardian, co-authored by the journalist #Prayaag Akbar—the son of MJ Akbar, who owned the weekly along with the senior advocate and BJP member Ram Jethmalani—described the workings of this #ICICI loan as “financial chicanery,” and said the company had “indulged in financial misdemeanours and malpractices in connivances with ICICI.” The article claimed that the value of each pledged share was Rs 439, when in fact the price at the time the loan was granted was Rs 99. It alleged that “the worth of the collateral was far less than the amount given” as loan.In January 2011, NDTV sued MJ Akbar and others for defamation in the Delhi #HighCourt, and demanded Rs 25 crore in damages. The Roys claimed that their collateral was more than the value of the #ICICI loan. In December 2011, the court restrained the newspaper from “republishing or recirculating” the article online or in print—it remains unavailable on the paper’s website. The case is currently pending in court. But though #NDTV insisted that the story was defamatory, the transaction had come to the notice of authorities. In April 2013, #SanjayDutt wrote a letter about it to the Reserve Bank of India; the central bank responded the next month saying that the loan “is already receiving our attention.”The ICICI loan was only one link in the larger chain of borrowing that the Roys were trapped in, which had begun with the India Bulls loan. To repay ICICI, on 21 July 2009, the Roys took another loan, of Rs 350 crore, from an entity named Vishvapradhan Commercial Private Limited, or #VCPL. The source of this loan was Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, which routed the money to VCPL through a subsidiary. Prannoy and Radhika signed the agreement for #RRPR. On behalf of #VCPL, the agreement was signed by KR Raja—an employee of Reliance Industries.The terms of this loan were quite extraordinary. First, the Roys were required to divest a significant chunk of their personal stock in NDTV and transfer it to RRPR, taking its total shareholding from 15 percent to 26 percent of the company. Then, control of RRPR was effectively handed over to VCPL. (Even this transaction, which preceded the loan, raises serious questions of propriety. Radhika and Prannoy sold their shares to RRPR at Rs 4 per share when the market price was more than Rs 130. Had they sold at the market price, they would have made significant “capital gains”—or profit from the sale of an asset. This would, in turn, have attracted taxes. It is possible that selling the shares at a lower price saved the Roys crores in taxes. The Roys have defended their decision in the past, claiming that it was a transfer between promoters, and that they were entitled to sell their stock at any price they chose.)After the Roys’ shares were handed over to RRPR, NDTV received Rs 350 crore from VCPL, which they used to repay the ICICI loan. On 9 March 2010, the Roys together transferred an additional 3.18-percent stake of NDTV, which they held personally, to RRPR, at Rs 4 per share, taking RRPR’s total shareholding in the company to 29.18 percent. VCPL then paid an additional Rs 53.85 crore to RRPR, taking the total amount it loaned to NDTV up to Rs 403.85 crore.The agreement gave #VCPL the right to convert the loan into 99.99 percent of #RRPR’s equity—effectively, complete ownership—not just during the period of the loan but even after—“at any time during the tenure of the Loan or thereafter without requiring any further act or deed on the part of the Lender.” Puzzlingly, this meant that regardless of repayment, VCPL could officially take over RRPR at any time it wanted. For all practical purposes, this was a sale of 29.18 percent of NDTV to VCPL—a greater share than the individual holdings of Radhika and Prannoy Roy.Under the agreement, RRPR was to have three directors, one of whom was to be appointed by VCPL. NDTV could not sell or raise further equity, file for bankruptcy, or do anything that would affect RRPR’s shareholding, without VCPL’s consent. (Additionally, the Roys were also barred from selling or transferring their own shares in the company.) These conditions ensured the Roys no longer had any control over RRPR, which owned nearly one-third of NDTV’s stock; effectively their control over NDTV itself was seriously weakened.From VCPL onwards, the loan trail gets murkier. The company’s documents showed it had no assets, businesses or transactions on its books before the NDTV loan. To lend to RRPR, in the 2010 financial year, VCPL itself borrowed Rs 403.85 crore from Shinano Retail, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reliance. VCPL forwarded this money to RRPR as an unsecured, interest-free loan. The links between VCPL and Shinano form an Escherian stairwell that lead to Reliance no matter where you begin. VCPL’s directors, Ashwin Khasgiwala and Kalpana Srinivasan, were both employees of Reliance. VCPL shared the same address as the Reliance subsidiary Shinano, which in turn owned part of VCPL. And VCPL’s second owner was also a Reliance subsidiary.In its affidavit to the Delhi High Court, the income tax department was categorical in what it thought of VCPL. Quoting its own earlier report, from June 2011, the affidavit stated that VCPL “has no business activity and is not a genuine concern.” It added that it had forwarded details of its investigations into this “allegedly benami” transaction, to the relevant assessing authorities.In a related matter, also in the Delhi High Court, the income tax department clearly traced the source of the money that VCPL gave RRPR: “M/s #RRPRHoldingsPvtLtd. had taken a loan of Rs 403 crores approx. from M/s #VishvapradhanCommercialPvtLtd., which had taken loan from M/s #ShinanoRetailPvtLtd. and M/s #ShinanoRetailPvtLtd. had taken loans from #Reliancegroupofcompanies.”The fact that Reliance stepped in and helped out a floundering NDTV is borne out by a call recorded at the time, between the senior journalist MK Venu and Reliance’s lobbyist #NiiraRadia. The recording, made by the income tax department, was leaked the next year as part of the tranche that is now collectively called the “Radia tapes.” On 9 July 2009, Radia told Venu that she and Manoj Modi, a close associate of Mukesh Ambani, were visiting Delhi to meet Prannoy. “We need to support Prannoy, you know,” she said. “We feel it needs to be supported.”VCPL’s transactions are key to the question of who owns and controls NDTV. Its loan to RRPR meant that Reliance effectively controlled 29.18 percent of NDTV’s shares, while the Roys’ combined share fell to around 32 percent. This much of the trail has been reported before, though not by mainstream media organisations. The media-focused website Newslaundry, in January 2015, used company filings with the ministry of corporate affairs to track the flow of money, and show that Reliance had acquired a substantial stake in NDTV.But when Newslaundry asked Reliance about this loan, a spokesperson responded: “RIL does not have any direct or indirect interest in NDTV.” This seemed an unlikely assertion given the facts that were known.However, the company appears to have told Newslaundry the truth. Investigations by the income tax department, and information available with the ministry of corporate affairs, show that the trail took a mysterious turn at this point, which severed the link between Reliance and NDTV. During the 2012 financial year, Shinano Retail—to whom RRPR owed money through VCPL—declared in its annual report that VCPL had repaid its loan of Rs 403.85 crore. But the money did not come from NDTV—RRPR’s records for the same year showed that it still owed VCPL Rs 403.85 crore (the company still owes this money). Thus, the money Reliance lent RRPR had been paid back—but not by RRPR.How did this happen? The documents throw some light on the question, but still leave a lot unexplained. They show that during the 2012 financial year, #VCPL received Rs 50 crore from #EminentNetworks, a company owned by Mahendra Nahata, an industrialist, who is also on the board of one Reliance company. The transaction gave Eminent rights over VCPL’s loan to RRPR, worth Rs 403.85 crore.But this does not make intuitive sense. The value of a Rs 403.85 crore loan is, of course, Rs 403.85 crore. It does not stand to reason that VCPL would sell that loan to Eminent for a mere Rs 50 crore. Further, Shinano had declared that it received the entire Rs 403.85 crore from VCPL. But VCPL only had Rs 50 crore on its books that year, paid to it by Eminent. Even if it paid that entire amount to Shinano, that still left more than Rs 350 crore unaccounted for that Shinano claimed it had received from the company.This discrepancy suggests that either Eminent, through VCPL, paid more than the Rs 50 crore it claimed to have paid, or that Shinano received less than the Rs 403.85 crore it claimed to have received. Alternatively, a third party, which is off the books, and still unknown, might have made up the shortfall, and paid Shinano Rs 353.85 crore, helping snip the link between Reliance and NDTV. (The same year, VCPL’s ownership also changed hands, from Reliance companies to entities related to Mahendra Nahata.) If a mystery party is involved, it is perhaps fair to assume that their payment of such a large sum of money would come with rights over the agreement VCPL has with RRPR and the Roys—namely, rights over all of RRPR’s shares, which Mukesh Ambani once held indirectly, and riders on the Roys’ personal stake.NDTV should have declared the VCPL loan transactions to SEBI, as is mandatory for a publicly traded company when its promoter entity changes (RRPR was declared as a promoter entity, and the deal effectively changed its ownership). In response to a complaint from Sanjay Dutt, the regulator claimed in April 2015 that it was “unable to get its hands” on the loan agreement between VCPL and RRPR. This was odd: #SEBI, as the market regulator, should have been able to access the documents of NDTV, a publicly traded company. Further, by this time, the document was already available with another government agency—the income tax department.#NDTV did not inform the ministry of information and broadcasting about these transactions either, although it is mandatory for news companies to declare loans and other agreements to the ministry. What entity currently has indirect control over RRPR is for the moment unknown. It is clear, however, that the Roys’ move to strengthen their hold over NDTV by buying back shares has left them facing the prospect of losing significant control over their company.EVEN AS THE ROYS STRUGGLED with their account books, their newsroom was facing its own set of problems. In April 2004, just a year after the launch of NDTV 24×7, #ArnabGoswami, then the national news editor of the channel, left to launch and head a rival channel, #TimesNow. A year later, NDTV’s managing editor, #RajdeepSardesai, left to set up CNN-IBN with the entrepreneur Raghav Bahl. He took with him the company’s chief financial officer, Sameer Manchanda, who had been with the Roys since 1988.“ Metronation and Imagine were shut down over the next two years. As the pressure on them grew, the Roys resorted to layoffs. Between 2008 and 2009, the network fired approximately 250 people, or 20 percent of its workforce.This marked the beginning of a downslide from which NDTV hasn’t recovered. Its stock price, which reached a high of Rs 511 in January 2008, tumbled to Rs 25 in 2012, and currently hovers between Rs 80 and Rs 100. Its value by market capitalisation—the share price multiplied by the total number of shares—has dropped from around Rs 3,000 crore in early 2008 to less than Rs 600 crore currently. It last recorded a profit, of Rs 21.9 crore, in March 2005. Its annual losses are now in the tens of crores—Rs 84 crore for the financial year 2014 and Rs 46 crore for the financial year 2015.Meanwhile, the network’s editorial credibility also suffered a serious blow. In November 2010, the magazines Open and Outlook published the first set of the #Radiatapes, which prominently featured NDTV’s group editor, #BarkhaDutt.In the leaked conversations, Dutt’s conduct appeared to violate norms of editorial probity. In the most glaring such instance, she agreed to courier information from Radia to the #Congress on behalf of the party’s coalition partner, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. In one of the many conversations between the two, from 22 May 2009, Dutt asked Radia, “Tell me, what should I tell them?” Later the same day, Dutt said, “I’ve had a long chat, and they promised me that Azad will speak to him,” referring to #GhulamNabiAzad of the #Congress, and M Karunanidhi of the #DMK. The conversation took place a month before Radia told Venu that she planned to meet Prannoy in Delhi to “support” him; it was two months before the Roys signed the #VCPL loan agreement with the Reliance employee KR Raja. (A number of individuals involved in the Roys’ financial dealings have been under investigation for other business matters. The serious fraud investigation office has probed KR Raja and Radia for Reliance’s transactions with INX News Private Limited. And Mahendra Nahata, who bought RRPR’s loan in the 2012 financial year, was recently investigated by the CBI as part of the cases related to the sale of 2G spectrum.)EACH OF THE INVESTIGATIONS into NDTV’s business dealings is like a cocked gun pointed at the company. These, more than newsroom troubles, and even questions of ownership, seem to be the biggest threats looming over the company and the Roys.Of these investigations, the probes by multiple agencies into NDTV’s web of offshore transactions are perhaps the most critical. The enforcement directorate and income tax department’s affidavits on their investigations into these matters mention that the CBI and the RBI, among other agencies, are also examining these deals.Some of these transactions were first investigated in the mid 2000s, by an income tax officer named SK Srivastava, whom I met in late September at his office in Noida. A tall man with a toothbrush moustache, Srivastava can rattle off long monologues about NDTV—which he seems to hate passionately—and its finances, without consulting a single document.He started with investigations into alleged violations in NDTV’s tax assessments. (In an apparent conflict of interest, one tax officer who was involved in the assessment, Sumana Sen, was married to an NDTV journalist named Abhisar Sharma, who is now with ABP News.)In his letter, sent in December 2013, Jethmalani accused NDTV and Chidambaram of concealing income of around Rs 5,700 crore, laundering money to the tune of Rs 5,500 crore, evading taxes of about Rs 3,500 crore, and embezzling around Rs 1.5 crore of government money. NDTV had floated “altogether 21 bogus subsidiaries” across the world, Jethmalani thundered at Chidambaram, through which “illicit black money was laundered,” and the money in question “belongs to you and your son.”The minister replied to Jethmalani on 19 December, denying all charges and calling them “outrageous allegations.” He wrote that he had, nevertheless, forwarded the letter and the details to the finance-cum-revenue secretary to “cause an inquiry in a time bound manner and to submit the conclusions of the inquiry in a sealed cover directly to the Hon’ble Prime Minister.” Unconvinced, Jethmalani responded ten days later, saying that he didn’t see how a fair inquiry could be conducted by the minister’s subordinate. He signed off saying, “I regret this matter has to end in the courts of the country or perhaps the Court of the Sovereign People of India.”A similar exchange took place between Prannoy and Gurumurthy in January 2014. In the email conversation, Prannoy tried to convince Gurumurthy, with the help of documents, that his accusations were baseless. Like Jethmalani, Gurumurthy responded, ten days later, saying that he remained unconvinced.Many of the findings from the current investigations pertain to the question of raising foreign capital for a media business. (Until 11 November, a television news company was allowed a maximum of 26 percent of its equity through foreign direct investment. Recently, the Modi government raised this limit to 49 percent.) The #ED affidavit stated that #NDTV had set up a number of wholly-owned subsidiaries and joint ventures to raise capital abroad. Some of these, it said, “directly or indirectly through step down subsidiaries made investments in India.” It claimed that, between 2006 and 2011, “NDTV or related companies in India” received Rs 648.81 crore in foreign funds. (At another point, the affidavit cited a foreign direct investment of Rs 1,295 crore in “NDTV related” companies, though it didn’t specify a time frame for this.)Also citing a CBI inquiry dating to 2011, the affidavit outlined one particularly tangled set of transactions to this end. It begins with a transfer of a sum of Rs 387.62 crore from “NDTV (Media) Mauritius Ltd” to “NDTV Studios Ltd,” an Indian subsidiary of NDTV Limited. “A small portion of these funds were used for investment in 6 new subsidiaries in India in 2009,” the affidavit stated, while a major portion went to a convoluted trail of companies, including some that it describes as subsidiaries of NDTV. “NDTV Studios Ltd and its 6 subsidiaries were thereafter merged with NDTV,” stated the affidavit, “thereby creating doubts about the purpose of their setting up as well as the sources of funds for NDTV (Media) Mauritius Ltd and the need to set up various companies in Mauritius.”Given Jethmalani’s explosive allegations against #Chidambaram, the question arises whether the latest affidavits claimed any link between the company and the minister. As it turns out, the name does appear in the #ED affidavit, but in ambiguous phrasing. “It is alleged that around 294 companies with investors/ share holders having surnames like Chidambaram are running from the same premises as NDTV Network PLC”—a London-based subsidiary of NDTV—the affidavit stated. The phrase “it is alleged” leaves unclear whether it is the ED which is alleging this, or whether the agency is referring to another, possibly older, allegation. Further, the documents don’t identify any individuals beyond the phrase “with surnames like Chidambaram,” and don’t identify any precise allegations of violations that link NDTV with the former minister.The ED affidavit devoted considerable space to the funds raised by the London subsidiary NDTV Network PLC, which filed an application with the Foreign Investment Promotion Board on 4 January 2007 for approval for investment into the “non-news sector in India.” After receiving this approval, the company raised funds from foreign sources to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. This included a sum of $150 million raised from NBC Universal, one of the largest media companies in the United States. The money gave NBCU an indirect stake of 26 percent in NDTV Network PLC.Before this deal was announced, a string of emails was exchanged between NDTV’s senior-most executives and consultants of the firm #PricewaterhouseCoopers, in which they discussed the drafting of a press release about the matter. “If asked a question what will the money be used for???” wrote a #PwC executive named Vivek Mehra on 21 May 2008. “We need to decide how to answer this question carefully.”The next day, #PrannoyRoy sent out “a first bash” at the press release, in which he wrote that as a result of the NBCU deal, the parent company #NDTV Ltd now had funds of $150 million “to use for any opportunities in the future including acquisitions, expansion in the news space, or in the beyond-news space.” The phrase “expansion in the news space” continued to appear in the next few drafts of the release, exchanged over email. However, the final press release, published on the NDTV website, did not claim that the funds would be used for news.In its affidavit, the #ED said that it had taken statements from Navneet Raghuvanshi, NDTV’s company secretary, on 17 August, and 3, 4, 9, 10, 11 and 12 September last year, as part of its probe. The income tax department summoned NDTV’s vice-chairman, KVL Narayana Rao, around the same time. The ED affidavit ended with the line: “Further investigation in this case is in progress.”On 19 November, the ED stepped up its offensive against #NDTV, and issued a show-cause notice to the company. In it, the agency said it had identified contraventions of the foreign exchange management act, or #FEMA, by the company. It also listed transactions by the company that the RBI has described as spurious. A “note” from the agency about the show-cause notice claimed that the amount involved was Rs 2,030.05 crore. The note ended, echoing the affidavit: “Further investigation under #FEMA is being carried out.”But the sheer number of probes against NDTV, and their depth, is alarming. The figure raised in just the #ED’s show-cause notice, Rs 2,030 crore, is more than three times what #NDTV is worth today. If the allegations in the investigations are proven, the consequences could be devastating for what was once India’s most successful news network.

#1 Run a contest – I’ve run blog contests (currently not available) on this site before, and all I can say is that it gives great attention and new traffic to your blog.#2 Review books/products/films – Reviews deliver a lot of value to your followers, and people are constantly looking for honest opinions, not the fake ones that the web is full of.#3 Make comprehensive guide/tutorial – If you’re a professional in a field or know some topics extra well, feel free to help the ones who have less skills and experience than you do. Tutorials and guides provide a lot of value, which can help drive traffic and convert followers. As an experienced blogger, I teach others how to start and maintain a blog.#4 Interview someone – Know any celebrities or people who have great stories behind their work/life/career? Interviews are extremely popular in two cases: a) you deliver an interview with a famous person who rarely speaks in public or b) your shares rally insanely useful and practical tips and content.#5 Post a cool infographic – Infographics help to visualize complicated data, and they’re hugely popular these days. As always, when something becomes mainstream, the overall quality is poor. So, if you’re not a designer, hire one to get a viral infographic that stands out from the crowd.#6 Criticize a website/blog or a person – The web and blogs are great for discussion, opinions and criticizing. Nevertheless, if you are brave enough to say some crispy words about someone, make sure your text has strong arguments and is based on real facts. Random ranting is pointless.#7 Make a post full of GIFs – GIFs are the symbol of online entertainment and humor. There are thousands of GIFs and generators that help to produce new ones. See example: Linkbuilding in GIFs#8 Create a photo post – Share your favorite photos from your niche or personal photos from your latest traveling adventure. Keep in mind that if you’re not the author, you should always give credit to the original photographer by providing a link.#9 Tell a personal secret– We all have our dreams as well as secrets. Sharing them publicly gives very engaging content to the followers. As much as people love rumors, they love to know the dirty little secrets of other people.#10 Write inspirational/motivational post with famous quotes – People need little kicks to get going and get things done. Big things start from small ones, and motivational posts can do miracles. Here’s one of the best quotes from Steve Jobs: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else´s life.” Here are some tips for using quotes in your posts.#11 Share recent travel experiences – Travel blogs and posts are popular, and there are people who earn a living solely from writing about their adventures. Sharing inspiration and tips from your adventures is very useful to your audience, whether you’re in the travel industry or not. In case you haven’t traveled for a while, publish the best or worst experiences you’ve had in certain countries/airline companies/etc.#12 Host a giveaway – Have you ever thought why products like GoPro become more and more popular with each day? They do giveaway campaigns regularly. People love free stuff, and taking advantage of that helps you reach new audiences.#13 Write down a conspiracy theory – Have you heard about all the number theories behind important events and people? Now it’s time to start a new one; let your imagination free, or simply share you opinions about the known ones.#14 Show log files of intense conversations – Who doesn’t like to read log-files that are somewhat offensive?#15 Write a short story – No previous experience with writing fiction? Publish your short story (about 200 – 500 words), and ask your followers for feedback.#16 Sing a song – Great artists and singers are not born overnight. First, they’ll have to discover their talent. Find your new hobby or passion in music.#17 Create a list of something – People are lazy. They don’t want to waste time on searching and gathering information. That’s the reason why lists are popular. Create a TOP10, or better yet, a TOP100 list. Lists of movies, books, influential people, or any other topic can easily generate buzz.#18 Write down all the thoughts you had in mind today – This is pretty mindf*#?, but if you are bored, then you can try this method as well.#19 Share your goals/dreams publicly – Write down all your goals for the current year or dreams where you want to be in 5 years time. It gives nice pressure and motivation to achieve the goals, and it will excite your loyal followers.#20 Make a link carnival and ask others to join – All sorts of link carnivals and linky parties are becoming very popular.#21 Announce that you’ve turned the comments into “do-follow” so you can get more comments – You will probably get 50% more comments in that way. However, the downside of this technique is that you might receive a lot of “spam” blog comments as well. CommentLuv is a great plugin to start with.#22 Build your to-do list – There are many to-do list apps and services, but try to publish your tasks on your blog. Other people will have the opportunity to learn from you. How you build your tasks, how broad or narrow they are, etc. can all be helpful to your audience.#23 Write a post in response to some recent post/news – In other words, become an opinion blogger or analyst. When you manage to write high-level content on hot topics, your blog can be featured on major newspapers and websites.#24 Make a full case study about something – We covered tutorials already, but case studies reveal what you’ve done, how you’ve done it, and what the results are. This is extremely interesting for many folks, especially for me.#25 Share your favorite blogs/bloggers in one post – It’s a bit similar to “Make a list” idea, but sharing the blogs and bloggers you follow is never a bad idea. Give the resources to your readers; believe me, they are grateful and won’t stop following you.#26 Invite your readers to submit guest posts – Are you struggling with new posts or have to leave for some time? Ask people to write guest posts. It’s a win-win situation; you get the content, and they can build up their name or brand.#27 Publish the best comments that your blog has received throughout the history – Are you using a vote system on your comments or just know the posts where some comments have raised very fruitful discussions? Share them in a separate post.#28 Share your blogs income + traffic numbers– Prove that a blog in your niche can have reasonable traffic numbers and maybe even be profitable. Bring Google Analytics data to daylight and it’s very nice if you provided some analysis in important points, for example a major change in traffic numbers etc. Pat Flynnhas done that , why don’t you?#29 Tell a joke – That’s pretty straight forward. Humor never gets old, and great jokes are really entertaining.#30 Bust a myth – There are thousands of well-known things that actually are not true. In other words, they’re called myths. Take some time and do some research to disprove some of them. If your follower love it, feel free to become a MythBuster.#31 Produce or publish your art – Online galleries and portfolios look cool and can be the first step to the world for artists. So publish your paintings, comics, graphical design masterpieces, and other creations as well.#32 Publish a post about your success and epic failures – Being successful means making mistakes (or in other words: failing). But failing is not all bad. It’s a learning experience that allows you to be better the next time. So, that’s the reason why you should talk publicly about your success and failures, to let others learn from it.#33 Ask your readers to tweet, like, and share the posts they like – Spreading the word about your blog or posts is important, but sometimes people need a little extra kick to do that, so write a post for that.#34 Start a poll – That’s simple. Want to know what other people prefer or think about a certain topic? Start a poll to get quick overview.#35 Write a post about things you regret doing/not doing – When you surf around Quora or Yahoo Answers, you’ll find many very popular topics and posts about the things people regret doing and not doing. Try to write down your own list.#36 Pose a rhetorical question in your blog post – This blog post idea is similar to posting random quotes just to produce some content, but it can really spark a discussion, even if the question is rhetorical.#37 Post a picture that speaks more than thousand words- Sometimes you can and SHOULD post images that tell us a story. It does not only grab attention and increase your visitors average time spent on the blog, but it’s also extremely interesting.Check this .#38 Publish some little or unknown facts – The Internet and different encyclopedias are full of facts, some of them really random. For example “Did you know that the pink/red/white color of flamingos comes from the food they eat?” You can gather those facts in your own post to generate buzz.#39 Publish an In Memorian post – It’s polite to commemorate the people who pass away.#40 Bring out the most important dates in history – Pick a country/war/invention/company, and write down the important dates of it. People love to get general but detailed overviews.#41 Tell about your latest event experiences – Visited a concert or a festival lately? Write a review about it.#42 Publish your CV online – Show your previous experience and the things you are good at. You might get a job offer for doing that.#43 Post an obvious lie – You can turn things upside down when you tell an obvious lie inside your blog post. People might get mad at you, but that doesn’t matter.#44 Write where you’d like to travel – … and encourage others to do the same in your comments. This kind of conversations usually turns out pretty big.#45 Blog about marketing secrets – Tell your readers about your top secret strategies, techniques, and tactics you use to get more followers and traffic.#46 Write about the most important lessons you’ve learned in your life – What is more kind than helping others and analyzing yourself at the same time?#47 Tell your readers what they should do to succeed – Create a blog post that explains your readers what they should do in order to become successful as you are.#48 Do a video post about your day– Let your readers see about your daily life. For me, it’s extremely interesting, but you also need to have some courage to do that. In either way, it’s up to you.#49 Show off your personal stuff; car(s), house, accessories – This is something that creates many different opinions among your readers. Don’t be scared to show your stuff. It can also turn out as a motivational blog post from someone who doesn’t own those kind of things. People love those kind of things.#50 Build a list – Build a list of your readers. You can use Aweber or Mailchimp for that; in that way you can inform your readers about the new posts you’ve made.#51 Create a blog post about your bad habits – Smoking, alcohol, drugs. Tell them something shocking!#52 Offer free help in your industry to get new contacts – Free help gives you great reputation and people will start sharing your blog more often as well as suggesting to their friends. It helps to grow into a branded expert.#53 Research and analyze a topic in your industry – Well written and analyzed posts get great attention. Invest time and grow your followers by that. Many professional bloggers write one post for more than 12 working hours, they invest a lot of time to produce perfect posts.#54 Answer to every single comment personally – Make your readers feel special and honored. It takes only a couple of minutes to answer them personally but you can get new friends, co-authors or even business partners.#55 Write a longer “About Me” post – Classical About Me posts are a couple of lines but introduce yourself more and write a longer one. People like to know what’s the background of the content they’re reading but they usually don’t have time to check LinkedIn accounts or just Google the name.#56 Create a post that utilizes a bar chart or pie chart - Infographics is one of the hottest keywords in the web industry. Visualizing data makes it easier to read, gather interesting data and build charts!#57 Write down your monthly personal budget and expenses - You can document what ever costs you like. Take your website and show how many dollars you’ve spent on it and also show the income/revenue side of it. Additionally, you can use the same model on your family budget.#58 Participate in reciprocal guest blogging – Talk to your followers and look for people who’d like to write you a guest post and you’ll write one by yourself.#59 Post linkbait - Don’t know what linkbait is? Have a look at here: 10 extraordinary linkbait examples#60 Make a post about your most popular posts - Gather the data behind the most popular posts (traffic, shares and comments) and write them down in a single post.#61 Publish a “What If” post –Use your imagination and write a post about what if you’re going to move to another country or travel the world or win billion dollars. People love to dream and believe that these things will happen to them.#62 Publish online courses/e-books – If you’re an expert in your field, invest time in writing and publishing courses and e-books. Create quality content, and people will be ready to buy it for nice amount of money. When money is not an important aspect, publish the content for free.#64 Turn on Gravatar images on your blog comment - Make it as a real conversation by turning on Gravatar images (just like my blog has).#65 Build your portfolio – A portfolio is a great way to showcase experience. It’s a wide-spread myth that only artists and photographers can use it. Build a portfolio of projects you’ve run, the applications you’ve coded, and so on.#66 Write in your own everyday language/writing style – Forget the well-known rules, and use the expressions you use every day. It’s a great way to make your posts more enjoyable and stand out.#61 Share food recipes – Don’t know what to write about? Share the recipes of your favorite meals and desserts.#68 Publish a post about cons and pros about something – Things are never black & white, and there is nothing perfect in this world. There’s always some cons about something.#69 Show others how to secure their blogs – This is something that is useful and interesting at the same time. I recently posted an infographic about “What if Your WordPress Gets Hacked.”#70 Hold a conference or a webinar through blog post –Have a “group” meeting at next Saturday 9 PM. I’m more than sure that if you hold a live event through your blog then there will be people watching it.#71 Ask for general feedback on your blog – Sometimes you can improve your blog by the way your readers want. Minor tweaks here and there can add value that can bring you more traffic and returning visitors.#72 Curate or summarize someone else’s work - Write short summaries to bring out the most important aspects or points in other published writings. This helps save a lot of time for the readers who are only looking for the most important information.#73 Publish a list of your most successful Tweets/social media posts (based on re-tweets & likes) – Have you had any success with massive re-tweeting, liking, or sharing? Share the tweets and posts with others.#74 Compile a list of common mistakes in your niche - Many people don’t know the basics and make common mistakes. Write tutorials to help them prevent these misunderstandings.#75 Publish a manifesto - See a sample here.#76 Make a post about future plans - Dreaming of being a world-class analyst or an entrepreneur in five years time? Looking to start studies at a university? Write the plans down; it’s interesting to read them later on, and it gives new ideas to other people as well.#77 Write down an extremely long blog comments – In that way you can show your readers that you actually care about their comments & opinions.#78 Thank your audience for following you – Show that you respect them.#79 Write about why you actually started blogging - Simply tell your followers how it all started…#80 Abandon your blog for a week and make others think “what happened to you” - It’s pretty risky, but if you are famous blogger – this will get you a lot of buzz.#81 Write the list of things and activities you want to do before death – Ever seen the books in the bookstore called “1001 places to visit/foods to eat/artists to listen before you die?” Build your own list, and inspire others to do that as well.#82 Show others how to do something extremely FAST - Everybody likes to do something quickly. As you know, time is the most valuable thing in our lives. For example, David Risley teach you how to blog fast.#83 Write a satirical blog post - Satire never gets old, but don’t be too harsh. These posts can easily go viral, but be sure you’re prepared for backlash.#84 Write a series of blog posts – To make your readers constantly engaged with your blog, then I suggest you to start a blog post series. Here’s a good example of blog post series: How to Make a WordPress Plugin #1.#85 Publish a questions and answers blog post - Make a “Questions Monday.” Promise to answer all the questions your audience has.#86 Post a quote - People adore quotes that make them think and spread motivation, so use them wisely.#87 Launch a free e-book about your best blog posts– Gather the most viewed and commented posts together and convert them into an e-book that can be published on Amazon or other online bookstores.#88 Run PPC campaign through Facebook to your blog posts – It costs a little, but this option means a lot of new traffic and followers.#89 Update/invest in customized blog post design - Great blogs and posts need great design to keep the readers coming back. Hire professionals; never try to do “something” in PhotoShop unless you’re not a designer.#90 Make 404 page that is a game – That’s a fun way to get people staying on your page. See the tutorial HERE.#91 Make a handwritten post and publish it by taking a photo - Hand-written texts look amazing and shows your creativity as well as character.#92 Make an ultimate resource post - Operating in fishing niche? Publish a list of most useful resources for that.#93 Invite experts to comment your posts - Busy people work the most, but they’re quite often ready to help if you offer them value from your side. If you ask them, do it kindly, and state clearly why they should do it and what they get for doing it.#94 Publish a post as an audio file (mp3) - Write your post and record it as an audio file. It allows the readers to follow the blog on the go; all they need is an mp3 player or a smartphone.#95 Make list of useful & interesting people to follow in your niche - This is another “TOP” category post idea. List the useful people who provide great insights; these posts become viral quickly.#96 List nostalgic post about different blogs in your niche, and show readers how they’ve changed from 2000 by using web.archive - Web design and trends have changed a lot. It creates great WOW effect for people to see how ugly the websites used to be back in the Dot.com bubble times.#97 Link to new or interesting patents in your niche that amazes people - Ever heard that Apple patented the two-finger movements on smartphones and tablets? Here’s your chance to shine.#98 Ask some billionaire to write a post for you - As these people are often too busy to respond, they enjoy fame and publicity. This is definitely worth a try, even when you fail.#99 Rant about something that REALLY disturbs you - Ranting on the Internet is sometimes pointless, but well-argumented posts may get a lot of attention.#100 Create a list of online tools you find useful- There are literally dozens of tools that can make life a lot easier, create a list of the ones you use or would like to use.#101 Dare your readers to do something - And then ask them to report back on how it went. Or, have them dare you to do something, and then post a video of you doing it.———–Update: Since I got lot of great feedback from the post, I decided to add another 35 blog post ideas to the list.#102 Host a voting contest – Ask your readers to nominate the best blogs in your niche. This can turn into several posts since you can take those nominations and write a “Top 100 Blogs in the Industry” post. Notify the winning blogs so that they’ll send some of their followers your way.#103 Curate content in your niche – Did you read some interesting articles this week? Link to the best ones in your blog post as a resource for your readers.#104 Wish yourself happy birthday – Are you entering the second year of your blog? Wish it a happy birthday, and then show readers how far you’ve come.#105 Make a list of interesting stats in your niche – Want to blow your reader’s minds? Create a useful resource of stats in your niche.#106 Repost a long email response to a reader’s question – Do you often get personal readers’ questions only to respond in a long email? Share that response with your other followers. (Just be sure you’re keeping any emails, names, etc. confidential.)#107 Write a FAQs post – What questions do you get asked constantly, either about yourself or your industry? Create a FAQs post answering all these questions. Repost this as a page on your website so that it’s easy to find for newcomers.#108 Write an ultimate list – Choose a topic and write an ultimate list of ideas so that it’s the first go-to resource for your readers.#109 Create an A-Z post – For example, write an A to Z post on travel tips or an A to Z post on the best WordPress plugins.#110 Develop a profile on an influential figure - Is there someone in your niche you admire? Write a profile on them detailing who they are, what they do, why you love them, and where your readers can learn more.#111 Shoutout to your mentors and fans – Write a post naming specific people who have influenced your blogging journey. Be sure to let them know when the post is public to help drive their followers to your site.#112 Showcase a reader – Do you have a strong relationship with some of your loyal readers? Ask one of them if you can interview him or her and post his or her responses on your blog.#113 List the best apps in your niche – Are you in the finance industry? List and review the top 50 mobile accounting apps. The more apps you list, the better.#114 Write a makeover post – Did you just get a haircut? Maybe you remodeled your kitchen. Show your readers the before and after photos.#115 Run a month of giveaways – Each day, post a new blog post (or have a guest author), and then include a quick gift for one winner at the end of each post. Be sure they have to earn it, such as by leaving a blog comment to be eligible. Add in a few “surprise” gifts so they don’t always know what’s coming.#116 Hold a guest post pitching contest – Do you accept guest authors on your blog? Hold a pitching contest where readers can pitch their idea in the comment section and give each other feedback before you decide which pitch will turn into a published blog post on your site.#117 Develop a quiz – Use a quiz-building application like Online Quiz Creator, and make your next post into a game for your readers.#118 Create a glossary – Do people get confused about terminology in your industry? Write a post detailing the definition to commonly confused words in your niche.#119 Write an open letter – Do you have someone you’ve always wanted to say something to, whether it’s your child or a celebrity? Finally say those things, and then post it on your blog for the world to see.#120 Share a worksheet – What’s the number one thing your readers want to know about themselves and your niche? Create a worksheet that will help them answer that question. For instance, if you’re in the finance industry, you might develop a “Get out of Debt” worksheet that will help readers better plan their finances.#121 Share coupon codes – Do a bit of research and find out which online stores in your niche are offering discounts or coupon codes right now, and then share that information with your readers.#122 Create a list of free eBooks – People love free stuff, so help generate some buzz by creating a long list of helpful and free eBooks in your niche.#123 Predict the future – Tell you readers where you industry is going in the next five years, or talk about where you think a celeb will be in a year or two.#124 Compile a list of jokes – People love to be entertained. Make them laugh with a list of jokes related to your industry.#125 Draw a comic – Show your personality by drawing and uploading your own comic. Try to make it clever and funny to drive more traffic.#126 Write a poem – This is a great option for lifestyle bloggers, but if you can provide enough entertainment value, your poem can become wildly effective in any niche.#127 Tell your readers who to follow on Twitter – This type of posts provides a lot of value to readers, and you just might get the attention of some influential people in your industry.#128 Make a list detailing influential people’s response to a single question – Connect with a dozen or so popular individuals in your niche, and ask them all the same question, such as, “What’s your go-to marketing tactic that you believe is the most successful?” Compile their answers in a blog post, but be sure to ask their permission and to give them credit for the answer.#129 Highlight the key takeaways from a recent conference – Are you planning to attend a conference in your niche? Be sure you’re taking notes so that you can report back to your followers the most important points covered.#130 Make a list of hacks – People love it when they discover something that will make life easier. Write a list of hacks that will make your readers say, “Why didn’t I ever think of that?”#131 Write about your plans for the holidays – No matter what holiday is approaching, share with your readers what you’ll be doing. This gives them a heads-up if you’ll be gone, but it also sparks conversation. Be sure you ask them to share their plans as well.#132 Record a Skype call – Get in touch with a well-known person in your niche and talk with them via Skype. Record the conversation and post it for your viewers to see later. You can also host live calls via Google Hangouts.#133 Put on a skit – People absolutely love short entertaining videos. Video tape a quick skit, whether you want to send a political message, educate your viewers, or just produce a spoof that will make them laugh.#134 Host a free live workshop – Who would pass up something free, especially if you have something valuable to offer? Share some of your training and consulting material with your readers via a live online workshop.#135 Write a blog post about 135 blog post ideas (or more) in your niche – List down 135 blog topics in your niche; a lot of people find it useful :).From : 101 Blog Post Ideas That Will Make Your Blog "HOT"

Great Question.A Question I believe that might get many different answers.But here is my take on it...The time has come my friend for us to kill the term “marketing” and replace it with "Trusting".“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” – SocratesAs more and more companies start attempting to jump into the digital marketing space.More and more of them will Fail.Why you ask?Because: The old model is broken.The days are gone where you can simply send traffic to your site and expect INSTANT sells.The consumers, the audience. Your brothers and sisters are much wiser than ever before.They can smell a sales page, a mile away.And you know what?They hate that sales!And who's to blame them :)Remember...People don’t like to be sold-but they love to buy. ~ Giffeot GitomerThe Old ModelI would say about 90% of companies still use this old modelStep #1Drive traffic from outsides platforms​FacebookYouTubeGoogleStep #2Cold Traffic lands of Sales page.And your Brand “Hopes” that the cold leads some how convert into clients.Do you already see the problem?Hope is the problem? Ouch!Listen.. This might hurt to hear.But...No one cares about your product or service yet!Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care. ~ Theodore RooseveltStep #3You pray to the traffic and conversions gods that somehow your leads will buy your product,And you jump up and down if you get 1% conversion rate.1% is this a joke?I would feel ashamed if my goal was 1%Do you think Uber and Apple aim for 1%?ah..no!Uber and apple understand the Trust curve and they use it to their full potentialThe old model is broken.It doesn't work anymore and THANK GOD!Because this model does not respect your clients and does not foster a trust economySo what are you suppose to do?Enter The Trust FunnelI have been using this funnel and variation of it with my clients and the results speak volumes.It doesn't matter if you are doing 250k revenue or 50 million revenue you can apply this in your business today.I am all about strategy and tactics and less about theory.With each post I want you to walk away with a strategic and tactical blueprint you can literally plug and play into your business.Now on with the showTRUST CURVE FUNNELTo save you the time and confusion, I want to address the color code in the funnel:The three main colors I want you to understand is:GREEN: Lead has Opted in to your list. Or lead has clicked open the email in 24 hoursRed: Lead has NOT opted in: Lead has Not opened the email in 24 hoursYellow: Different Subject line. Same email sent 24 hours after original email was not openedIf You Prefer I made A Video Walk through…We are going to break this funnel down into two parts.Part 1: The overview (Strategy and understanding)Part 2: Tactics: How to. (Software)The OverviewThe premise behind the Trust funnel is as you guessed it.... TRUST.The whole idea and psychology around it- is...How can you as an entrepreneur earn and forge a relationship with your lead?I Will go through each step so you can understand it.Pillar PostWhat is it?Pillar posts are evergreen, insightful content that has the potential to get tons of traffic and backlinks.They are timeless.Normally these pillar posts have a word count of 2000 words.The point of the pillar post is to INCREASE the trust relationship with your lead.The pillar post is meant to make your brand “THE” authority in your industry.Here are two scenariosScenario #1The Lead arrives to your site. Reads a 400 word article. No emotional impact (emotions impact = memory)Scenario #2The lead arrives to your site and reads a 5000 word, monster pillar post, which solves all their problems and they are blown away!Emotional imprint: Emotion = feeling = memory = Trust.Remember your job with the pillar post is to STUN your leads.​Here are some great examples of pillar posts you can use.Remember: Pillar posts take time to create usually 20 hours or so. But it's well worth.Get traffic to your website with Quora, Udemy & SlideShareWhat is long form, content and why does it work? How To Structure your Pillar PostIf you are looking at the Flowchart about you can see the pillar post leads to a Lead-magnet. But this is no ordinary leadmagent.This my friend is a content upgrade.What is a content upgrade?The ​ content upgrade is a complementary piece of information for you leads / clientsLet’s use this Pillar post an example.You have read this far and thank you, so how can I as a Brand increase your Trust with me.It is generally offered towards the end of the pillar post, but I recommend you sprinkle the content upgrade throughout your Pillarpost. (You can also consider Content upgrades as a CTA)Examples: Brian Backlinkoseveral popular bloggers like Brian Dean definitely adopted the tactic.This process was actually invented by Clay Collins over at Leadpages who was offering free landing page templates in each of his posts to grow his mailing list.The content Upgrade is so successful with the clients I work with it. That I make it mandatory for them to have it. I have seen Optin rates as high as 80% for this.Can you imagine if your business started doing this today?How more leads per day would you have?How many more sales?It’s sexy isn't it.. It's TRUST, baby!E-Mail Marketing (Trust Marketing)Assuming your lead has opted in for your Content upgrade. Your lead will now be getting his/Her first email from your Brand.Side Note: I have purposely not spoken about the Blue Dots (Facebook Retarget ads) As this gets a bit more complicated(If you prefer I Created a Video on the / process. Click Here)Staring The Automated E-Mail FunnelThank You Email: Blow Them Away!Your Lead has Opted in and is anticipating his or her “Gift” you promised. Hence.. There anticipation is at their highest! And as an entrepreneur, you can easily take advantage of this dynamic by including highly customized calls-to-action in your thank-you emails to leverage the fact that the lead is fresh and already actively engaged with your brand.Thank-you emails are effective for two main reasons:They place your content directly in the contact’s inbox. So even if he or she clicks away from the thank-you page they’re redirected to after completing your conversion form, they can still search their inbox and find the information they need to redeem the offer, such as the ebook download link, webinar login information, etc.People will often share your content by forwarding it via email, so thank-you emails give you yet another opportunity to extend the reach of your content to a brand new audience.An example of a simple thank-you email From HubspotWhat to include in a thank you email depends on what you want to communicateBut here are a few ideas:.Actually say thank you! The word ‘thank’ performs well in subject lines, achieving an open rate of 52.57% above average and a click rate of 27.44% above average.Include social media sharing links and encourage people to discuss or review their purchases.Stage 1 – Indoctrination Emails​Get To Know Me Email” Send 24 hours after The Thank you email is openedIndoctrinate – Teach them who you areThis is your chance to tell your potential client who you are and what your company stands for.Before you open a new Word document take a second and answer these questions:​Who are you and what do you do?What can readers expect from you?How often will they hear from you?Why are you different and what do you stand for?What is the goal of these emails?Look over your list of values and expectations.With your answers, you’ll be able to tell you what you want to convey and how you want to say it.As far as length goes, that’s up to you. By the time your leads have finished reading the Indoctrination email they should have a great idea of who you are and what you stand for.They should start to feel the trust building and nodding their head saying...“This my kind of brand”Include a list of benefits along with your company values.Don’t be afraid to get personal.Need a few ideas?Include a photo of your team togetherHighlight an accomplishmentTell a life changing storyIf You Prefer I made A Video Walk through…Your new lead will only receive the indoctrination series once.Example:Trunk Club is a clothing business that assigns men a personal stylist and ships clothing to you based on your personal taste.The Trunk Club model is a bit hard to understand at first and Trunk Club knows that.They got me to opt-in to a contest offer and hit me with this indoctrination email that teaches new leads about the business…They got me to opt-in to a contest offer, and hit me with this indoctrination email that teaches new leads about the business…​Email #2 “A Story Email”Tells a story — either our own or a client’s. Stories create a “relatable bridge” between you and your lead.Look into your database of clients and find a powerful case study story you can share with your lead.Listen...Humans connect through stories. It's how we communicateNot by numbers. But by emotion.Another way to think about the story structure is with the acronymADIA: ATTENTION: INTEREST: DESIRE: ACTIONCheck Out Andre Chaperon: Fantastic Resource for copyrightingYour introduction should attract the attention of your reader, raise their interest, and spark their desire for more. Your climax should encourage people to take action, to click or to sign up.Thinking about your email in the structure of a story will help you figure out how its pieces fit together.Here’s a useful exercise:Think of a subject line as your introduction. You want to draw people in, build up to the climax, and be clear from the start. Make the climax the goal of your email, and have the conclusion reinforce that goal.Where your climax lies depends on the kind of email you’re sending. Some newsletters share the entire full-length post in the body of the email.While there are plenty of benefits to this approach, it does have some drawbacks. Blog posts address those drawbacks, which is why (even with a few complaints) we realized we can create a better experience overall if we send an email update to you.John over at the mcmethod.com has an interesting format you can use if the AIDA is not your cup of tea The H.I.P.S. FrameworkStep 1 – HookFirst, get their attention with a subject line that promises to give them something in the email.Tease them. Get them hooked.Step 2 – InterestSecond, you have to get them interested. Otherwise, why would they read the rest of your email?Step 3 – ParableThird, tell a story or just bumble on about something interesting. This sounds hard, but is actually quite easy. Imagine you’re in a bar and you’re sitting next to a prospect, having a drink. You’ve got something on your mind re. His problem. You say, “You’re never gonna believe what happened the other day…”. The prospect then has to know what you’re about to say.Step 4 – SlideFourth, slide naturally into the pitch.Action Steps:Use the Frameworks to write a story to develop connection a deep in the emotional limbic area of the brain. (Stories connect)Email #3 “Wow- Surprise Gift”In this email its all about the WOW experienceRemember...what I said before.Marketing is dead.It's all about Trust marketing-permission marketingJust like a first date. You want to make her feel special like she is the only oneHere’s What to doInvite them to a private company group (We use slack and Facebook Groups)Give them a Free sample of your product no strings attachedGive them a Free courseThe whole point of the email is to make your leads feel special.You want to invoke a serotonin response to happiness (Just like a drug)Remember: People remember feeling. They don't remember the numbersOne of the BEST in the game is... Lady Gaga.Yes! I said Lady GagaLady Gaga’s Secrets” for Creating a Successful Online CommunityI- Keep It Closed: the more public the forum is, the more people tend to keep quiet. So, if you want members of an online community to open up on a personal level, it’s important to make them feel they are in a safe place and amongst other people with the same interests and codes. Michelsen suggests that, unless at the beginning, communities should be kept private, or at least require an invitation.II- Start small: If the community is closed, there’s even more reason you should start small. If possible, make people have to wait to join. This sense of scarcity creates an effect of exclusivity that makes users who want in or who want to retain their place, work overtime to get in or remain where they are.You don’t want an unruly environment, but rather a community focused on a single purpose, where people are constantly motivated to build a united and cohesive community. In addition, when you start with something small, it’s easier to moderate the discussions, and more importantly, define its identity and culture.III- Reward the faithful: all this requires a lot of commitment and work, which eventually should result in a multilevel experience where leaders and advocates get some sort of benefits and special treatment. This allows the community to identify and reward the most valuable contributors, and challenge and seduce the rest of the participants to reach their level. This type of interaction is invaluable because on other social networks, due to their nature, don’t allow for it.Action Steps: Your leads are like a first date.Treat her right. Make her feel like a princess. Build TRUST!Email #4 Show Me The Proof “Social Proof” The TrojanStudies show that 70% of consumers say they look at product reviews before making a purchase, and product reviews are 12x more trusted than product descriptions from manufacturers.Product reviews are just one example of social proof. However, these statistics do give us insight into the value of social proof when it comes to marketing.WHAT IS SOCIAL PROOF?Social proof is the concept that people will conform to the actions of others under the assumption that those actions are reflective of the correct behavior.Thanks to social media, social proof has gained steam over the past couple of years, but in truth it’s been around for a while in marketing.​Here’s an example:Priceline.com was one of the first web startups to use a celebrity endorser back in 1997. William Shatner is not a travel expert or travel industry influencers, but he has an overall likeable image. It seems genuine when he tries to save consumers money.The partnership has been a huge success for Priceline, which now has a $60 billion market cap. The fee that Shatner took in shares is estimated to be worth more than$600 million.Petflow’s Social Proof EmailPetflow is an online pet retailer that did $30 million in sales in 2012. They have over one million fans on Facebook which has become a huge source of revenue for them.Consumerreviews are now thsecone d most trusted forms of advertising and in 2012 52 percent of consumers were influenced by online reviews.In real terms this means that a one star increase on a Yelp review corresponds to a 5-9 percent increasein revenue.Adding social proof elements to your emails can be an effective way to boost trust and demonstrate that people are buying (and liking) your products.Word-of-mouth is the primary factor behind 20 to 50 percent of all purchases, while 63 percent of online customers say they’re more likely to buy on sites with positive reviews.If you don't sell products, but sell Services. Case studies are the best to use Case studiesWith case studies you can take that word-of-mouth and give it a further reach than your customer’s network, which in 2010 was estimated to be 1,375 people.Everyone knows that a happy customer is a marketing tool in itself, but very often this idea is confined to the word-of-mouth business they could generate.A case study or two can give your potential customers a genuine glowing review to base decisions on – taking one happy customer’s review and magnifying the effect, directing it towards your pool of potential customers.Petflow is an online pet retailer that did $30 million in sales in 2012. Yes 30 million. Not tooshabby!Email #5 Something is coming!Scientific experiments show that most people anticipate futurepositi ve events, as opposed to future negative events. In the absence of anxious/depressive psychological disorders, people automatically anticipate happiness more than they do with sadness.Here’s howanticipation works in a nutshell:The mind draws from past experiences to both predict and prepare for future events.Psychological research indicates that this phenomenon, known as “perceptual anticipation,” is caused by several types of stimuli:Stimuli that give us knowledge of results about past performanceStimuli that convey instruction about future tasksStimuli that correlate present tasks with the outcome of previous tasksIn short, past performance, future tasks and the comparison of the two form the landscape of perceptual anticipation that affects our behavior and response.Example: Create that special feeling.Use words and phrases like “exclusive,” “VIP” “Limited spots” “by invitation only” and “limited edition” to make your reader feel extra-special. Or enclose a certificate of nomination or membership card. All create anticipation by suggesting your recipient is about to have a unique experience unavailable to the general publicLet's use the KING himself to help youApple sold 2 million iPhone 5’s on day one, and then a couple of days later the stock hit the stratospheric price of $700 a share. So you could say they’re doing something right.Many companies go to great lengths to preserve confidentiality during the product development phase, but Apple is a master of the teaser marketing campaign, dragging on the suspense for as long as possible. For weeks if not months before the release of every iPhone, the media conversation has been building to deafening levels.For example, Apple announced a press conference for September 12, 2012, but didn’t say what the press announcement was about. In essence, Apple created a cliffhanger as the media and bloggers speculated,”What could it be—the new iPhone 5 or something else?All the bottom-up speculation in the media and blogosphere generated phenomenal consumer interest—for free. Only after weeks of free buzz did Apple launch a paid media campaign to keep the momentum going.Action Step: Build Anticipation In This Email. And Start focusing on Building A Tribe!Email #6 VSL "The Big Event"First, let's address what a VSL is?The video sales letter—or VSL for short—presents the same information you would have typed out in your sales letter (Long Form Sales Page) but in a new, more engaging format…They do a few great things better than “normal” sales letters… likeGet your message across better than text or audio.Educate your target audience more visually.Build trust and a connection with potential customersConvert better than “normal” sales letters.Industry experts on VSLs such Jon Benson – 3X Marketing VSL Maker have shed light on the benefits of this single video. Do check out their pieces which taught me valuable lessons on improving our VSLs!If you haven’t noticed, there is a pattern in all of these Video Sales Letters.This framework has been used for our top selling products and have been a sure-fire way to convert those numbers for us.Let me first explain the psychology behind this – the best way for a human mind to learn is by engaging in more senses.The beauty of VSLs is that it includes sight and sound. It also keeps the viewer engaged depending on the speed of the slide transitions of the video.The point of this is – YOU control the concentration and retention of the viewer.The email is to get your Lead from the email onto your VSL.Remember...This email was anticipated from your lead. Because of email 5.Your lead is waiting for the BIG EVENT.What are your Goals in this email?To PREFRAME your products and services and to get your leads to click the link inside of the email towards the VSL page.I would recommend you use Robert Cialdini's principles of infleunce in the emailHere is a great example from Pat Flynn. You can use it pretty much for anything.,Subject Line: It’s finally happening!PatThe above is Genius in Pat's case, because he uses this...as a segmentation triggers.However, you can use this a customizable VSL Trigger.Think about this.1. A VSL just for leads with no business yet2. A custom VSL for Leads with 500 per month3. Custom VSL for leads for 500+ monthThink of the Trust value you can get, if you are talking to your leads at their level.Action Steps:Use Attention grabbing Subject lineUse Robert Robert Cialdini's PrinciplesUse Action wordsSegment if you canConclusion:Resources needed: Tools and Human resourcesInfusionsoftActiveCampaignOntraportGotowebinarWebinarjamAdrollI Hope this helps you.