As you know by now, FTVLive is not big on social media.

We work long hours and we try to put most of that time in on FTVLive.com and not into social media which we do not own nor control.

The only social media that we post regularly to is our Twitter account @FTVLive . There you will find mainly posts about stories that we have uploaded to FTVLive and a few pictures of Rory, FTVLive’s VP of cuteness.

While we do post to Twitter, we are not very active when it comes to following people on the platform.

While we have over 11,000 followers (without trying), we only follow 76 people on Twitter.

For many that work in TV news, there is so much pressure from station management for talent to post on social media and grow followers. Many newsrooms keep a social media scoreboard in the newsroom, which basically pits talent against each other.

Female talent often learns that posting some “cheesecake” photo on social media will get them more “likes” then when the post an actual news story.

Not one manager has ever been able to prove to FTVLive that a talent posting on social media leads to bigger ratings on TV. Yet, talent is dogged by news management to keep posting.

One North Carolina TV viewers emailed FTVLive and said that he doesn’t work, nor has he ever worked in TV news. But he was surprised when two staffers at WNCN CBS17 (Nexstar Raleigh) followed him on Instagram.

At the time the viewer thought, "Wow. Two news ladies follow me on Instagram. That's random. Only TV credit I have is an episode of Jeopardy!."

He said it was not long after that both of the newswomen “unfollowed” him.

It is likely that the news people were using one of the many services to prop up their followers. It’s called F4F, or follow 4 follow. You follow someone and hope that they follow you back. You can do this on your own, but there are services that will do it for you.

While this helps build followers, there are other news people that want a quick fix and they go out and buy fake followers. Some services will put fake followers instantly on your account and other services add 50 to a couple of hundred people a week for weeks and weeks at a time.

There is one DC anchor that has been jealous about a co-Anchor’s bigger social media following and has resorted to buying fake followers.

Talent does it and so does stations. WPLG in Miami bought fake followers years ago and many of those fakes are still listed on their follow list.

You do wonder how much money has been spent by talent trying to prop up their social media score?

Might as well join in…..Today and Today only, if you follow @FTVLive on our Twitter account, we will follow you back. But since we only follow 76 people, we will only follow 4 people back to give us a total of 80.

We will pick 4 people randomly out of everyone that follows us on Twitter today.

Now, since the FTVLive twitter account is not really that exciting, there is a good chance that only 4 people will follow us all day and that means you have a very good chance of getting a follow back.

And we know just how important that is to you and the good news, it won’t cost you a penny.

Here’s the link to the @FTVLive twitter.

Follower now!

Or don’t, we really don’t care either way.