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So, this just fell in to my inbox...

I don't know if the writer has a stake in this or is just an interested observer.

http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/63866-reinventing-yourself-on-facebook-games-workshop-gets-it-bang-on


Reinventing yourself on Facebook? Games Workshop gets it bang on

Sometimes getting something very publicly (and very badly) wrong can turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

When Games Workshop closed its disastrous Facebook page in February 2013, no-one would have dreamed that just six months later it would be back and delivering an exemplary community experience.

'We ought to be on Facebook'
Games Workshop’s original Facebook page felt as if it had been created from of a sense of duty, rather than as part of an integrated digital and social strategy.

There was a decent feed of high quality product images (Games Workshop make and sell fantasy and sci-fi games and miniatures), but from what I remember, topics were led by the page owners.

Customers couldn’t post or start their own topics, resulting in an overwhelmingly ‘one-sided’ feeling to the content. 'Here’s what we have to tell you' rather than 'Let’s have a conversation'.

Rebellion and retreat
In February 2013, Games Workshop became involved in a heated debate about the ownership of the phrase ‘space marine’.

Unable (or unwilling?) to respond to the volume of Facebook comments that poured in as a result (largely negative), Games Workshop took the decision to close the page.

The official reason was given as:

Many thanks for your email. The Games Workshop Facebook page has been removed so that the customer interaction goes through our retail stores. This will be via face-to-face contact with customers while they are visiting the stores, or by using the individual Facebook pages each store has.
The difficult online conversations and debating points then simply moved to an alternative universe of independent blogs and forums, and therefore outside Games Workshop’s sphere of influence. For example:

Games Workshop tries to act like both the internet and globalization never happened.
It´s not new that Games Workshop hates feedback... especially the negative ones. It´s true that sometimes people get more angry and brutal than necessary, but cutting the feedback channels only gets things worse.
So was this a strange way for a high street retailer to behave? Had it genuinely pulled out of social media? Or was GW regrouping, and ready to make some significant digital marketing advances?

Regeneration
On August 31 2013 Games Workshop returned to Facebook: https://www.Facebook.com/GamesWorkshopDigitalEditions.

It’s now nominally meant to have a digital product focus (rather than feature the entire product line-up), but nonetheless it’s a centrally managed Facebook community page under an official Games Workshop banner. And it’s good.



In just less than three months it has grown from nothing to over 7,200 followers, about 200 have joined even as I write this. Word is getting around the fan base that the Games Workshop page has become a great place to ask questions and get official answers.

Customer posts are full of praise:

This page is awesome. Thanks for all the art, and extra stuff.

First of all let me say you are going a great job with this page, very friendly and responsive!

Revelation
Here’s how Games Workshop transformed a social media liability into a successful community page:

Conversational. Customers can post new topics. The page owner(s) also post customer content that has been submitted to them – along with a nice compliment and explanation of what it is. There is a genuine two-way dialogue between customers and Games Workshop.
Responsive. Customer questions are answered in good time. Almost all receive a response within a few hours.
Engaging. The page manager engages with customers in a respectful language and tone. Official responses come from ‘Eddie’ so they feel personal.
Eddie uses good humour with genuine respect for the question. There is a sense that he is a fan of the products too, so the community feels like a fan page run by a peer, with the added bonus that it’s 100% official news rather than unofficial rumours.

Informative. Eddie’s a delightful tease, regularly releasing snippets of information about upcoming products. It’s somewhere to repeat visit and delivers content customers want to see in their Facebook feed.
Socially driven. Fans are encouraged to recruit other fans. For example, on 17 November, Eddie promised to release more teaser content when there were 7,000 page likes.
This spread virally across gaming communities’ independent blogs and forums – within days the magic number was reached, and Eddie made good on his promise.

Reflection
I haven’t been able to find any other examples of multinationals that have pulled the plug on a corporate Facebook page (if you know of any, please share!), let alone returned as triumphantly as Games Workshop.

Yet it seems as if brave decisions can pay off. Removing the old page was a smart move, and eliminated the need to spend time and effort on flogging a horse that was dying on its feet. The break gave GW time to revisit its Facebook strategy with fresh eyes, and to find an excellent community page manager.

Yes, they have to start the recruiting battle again to reclaim their former numbers of followers and likes (I think the old page had somewhere around 100,000), but it’s off to a good start. My bet is that if the quality and engagement levels are sustained, this will be achieved.

Games Workshop has also proved that supporting ongoing customer engagement on Facebook takes nothing more scientifically advanced than good old fashioned service skills and good content to share. Eddie deserves a gold star for his work so far!

Luke Brason is Head of User Experience at Grass Roots and a guest blogger on Econsultancy. You can connect with Luke on Google Plus and LinkedIn.

Are comments on the new page overwhelmingly positive because everything negative is being removed?

The rest of the post is a bit innane.

Obvious fluff piece is obvious.

Not sure. GW has a bad online history, especially on FB

Ok I admit I started skimming near the end (there is only so much positive bull about GW I can read in one sitting ) but I got the distinct impression what they were saying was 'hey guys GW got it kinda wrong but now look at how great they are' whereas what they are describing is more along the lines of 'GW got it very, very, very wrong and now a new branch of GW are doing the same as everyone else and for some reason that fact should be applauded'.

GW Digital is only part of GW, and GW itself still doesn't have a facebook website.

Fluff piece or not, are the points he raises in the article (Conversational, Responsive, Engaging, Informative) with merit or not?

I had a quick look and could not find a link between the writer or the writer's company and GW (although absence of proof is not proof of absence).

 Koppo wrote:
Fluff piece or not, are the points he raises in the article (Conversational, Responsive, Engaging, Informative) with merit or not?

Nothing at all about those points are in any way unique to GW. They are exactly the same points that every other company that makes decent use of social media hit and have hit for a long time now. This article is applauding GW for getting in line with other, more successful, companies and for some reason holding them up as an example of perfection and innovation.

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Koppo wrote:
Fluff piece or not, are the points he raises in the article (Conversational, Responsive, Engaging, Informative) with merit or not?

This article is applauding GW for getting in line with other, more successful, companies and for some reason holding them up as an example of perfection and innovation.

Not at all. The article is saying that GW got it wrong, and now they seem to be getting it right. It's a pretty simple concept.

GW do many things wrong, but this page, and the Warhammer World page, are really well run. The folks write up stories on Warhammer World are great, really witty, and put a lot of work into it.

To reiterate:

It's not "GW getting it right."

This page is solely GW Digital. It is for and by only a small sub-set of the overall GW corporation.

It's nice to see that at least some portions of GW have an idea how to successfully run a social media presence, but please don't confuse this with thinking that mindset exists across GW as a whole.

By the logic in the article GW never did leave Facebook, since Forge Worlds Facebook page has been around.

If GW reopened their main Facebook I'd like to see just how positive the responses would actually be.

 fishy bob wrote:
By the logic in the article GW never did leave Facebook, since Forge Worlds Facebook page has been around.

If GW reopened their main Facebook I'd like to see just how positive the responses would actually be.

Agreed, but somehow, I find that unlikely to happen.

Though, there's always the GW Fulchester FB page

I'm sure the telling tale will be if we see things return that will obviously drive better relations with its customers.

Things customers want like, cheaper digital editions, less price gouging on older models(Dire Avengers as an example), actual DEALS on one-click bundles and responsive reaction to questions that need FAQed instead of never telling us if Maledictions stack or not. :-P

 Farseer Faenyin wrote:
I'm sure the telling tale will be if we see things return that will obviously drive better relations with its customers.

Things customers want like, cheaper digital editions, less price gouging on older models(Dire Avengers as an example), actual DEALS on one-click bundles and responsive reaction to questions that need FAQed instead of never telling us if Maledictions stack or not. :-P

you realise that none of those things have anything at all to do with gw:de, right?

Personally i think the digital codexes so far have been pretty meek, but the facebook page has been a positive step. I do think that the inquisition codex would have been a lot different if the writers had been given free reign, and it would have been better for it.

woohoo, you want props for doing something that everyone else does as standerd. Really?

That's like a criminal asking for praise because he didn't break into somebody's car today.

Hey, look at me everyone! I'm being good today see! Aren't I being a good boy today?

Give me a break.

What it seems like to me, as a GW veteran, that people decided to make the first FB page a whippingstand and this then forced GW to close it because it was FUBAR at that point.
The "new" FB page is confined to a very specific area of GW Ltd. and to a very specific interaction range.
This way it is kept nice and polite and peoples' needs are being taken care of rather than being blocked by all of the "whiners".
That sums the original posting up for me.

Taking it any other way does not make you a grognard.
Actually, I see no productive reason to take it any other way.
What am I missing?
Especially in this day and age where there are so many other similar,but different AND cheaper games out there.

I thought it was a solid article that articulated how GW has fixed a very real problem. I guess it shouldn't surprise me that it's been met with derision and dismissal, but come on.

The article never states that "GW is Sooo great" or that "GW is now perfect"; I mean, it's quite the contrary, and the author even says in the last few paragraphs that while they have a ways to go, it's "a good start."

I mean gak. It's almost as if some of you just refuse to acknowledge when GW fixes a problem or does something right.

It was a nice piece of propaganda.

Hmm... the article was... fluffy - devoid of real content, but not objectionable.

As to whether GW has solved their FB dilemma... time will tell. They have not yet had a complete PR botch like they did with Spots the Space Marine - until they do there is just no way to measure whether they have improved or not. (My gut says 'not' - but that is just as untested as the alternative.)

The Auld Grump

How will they deal with the next 'Spots the Space Marine' incident? That'll be the real test. GW prefer to go into their shell and cut off avenues for criticism when things go wrong.

The article seems a bit over congratulatory, and some things seem a bit overstated. I'm sure if they were 'regularly releasing snippets of upcoming products' I would have heard about this change in GW policy.

The article felt really pointless.

GW screwed up on FB, now there fb for a small part of the company isn't complete gak.

Thats pretty much the article summed up. Except the article seems to spin it as closer to a genius return to the world of social media.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
It was a nice piece of propaganda.

I assume that means you didn't bother to click through and discover that the website from which this article is derived has nothing to do with GW, nor does it seem to have any previous articles about GW.

I don't know where y'all are getting this "genius spin" nonsense. There's none of that in the article. They simply state the problem they did have and how they've "turned a liability into a successful community page". There's literally no verbiage espousing genius or brilliance, merely success and triumph.

Like I said before, it seems as if some folks are willing to find any reason possible to gak on anything productive and successful GW does.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
It was a nice piece of propaganda.

No-one is going to read the GW FaceBook page because of a "piece of propaganda".

If the page is well done and meets readers' needs it will prosper, otherwise it will fail.

Bad research is bad. This isn't GW's FB page, this is a departmental FB page in the same way Black Library, Forge World and Warhammer World also have FB pages, all of whom have been making a successful and positive use of the platform for several years.

The author has written about an event that exists only in their imagination.

Well, I should have seen these responses coming. All I read the article as was "GW fethed up really badly, now they're taking steps to build a solid community". Your interpretation will obviously vary.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
It was a nice piece of propaganda.

No-one is going to read the GW FaceBook page because of a "piece of propaganda".

If the page is well done and meets readers' needs it will prosper, otherwise it will fail.

I don't know why you try to lecture me, it is a fluff piece to make it appear that GW has learned their lesson and created a new site that will be awesome!

This is good news!

IMHO this is BS, Just propaganda to appear that things have changed.

It doesn't matter if your idea is right or wrong. If people like the page they will read it.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It doesn't matter if your idea is right or wrong. If people like the page they will read it.

Im not sure where that comes into what he is saying though...

 SilverMK2 wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It doesn't matter if your idea is right or wrong. If people like the page they will read it.

Im not sure where that comes into what he is saying though...

It's pretty obvious. He's saying that, despite those who insist that everything the evil GW-mega-corporation is evil and that an article pointing out one good thing must be propaganda, people will make their own decisions.

Always worth pointing out that the people who blah the most about propaganda are usually those with the most blinkered, binary world view.

Whether you think that the article is propaganda depends rather on how tightly you define propaganda.

It is a puff piece, by somebody that I suspect is pro-GW. (Which can be explained as simply as 'He plays WH40K and likes it'. No malice or pecuniary interest needed.)

That it inflates the importance of this FB page for one segment of GW is obvious.

That he likes the new page is obvious.

Whether he is doing so at the behest of GW... unknown and unknowable. But I would call it unlikely.

Whether the leopard has changed its spots... ... ... only time will tell.

But, at the end of the day... it just is not that important an article. Getting angry at it is like getting incensed by something in the Sunday supplement of a newspaper - nothing but a puff piece, a feel good article that neither reports on anything substantial nor bears any import of its own.

The Auld Grump