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GW’s ‘Eavy Metal Facebook Page Goes the Way of the Dodo
May 26, 2014 by dracs
It was a sad start to my day as Romain messaged me to let me know that the Games Workshop's 'Eavy Metal Facebook page has gone the way of the company's other social networking pages.
Image from masterminis.blogspot.co.uk
The Facebook page featured hobby advice, as well as a place where the Eavy Metal painting team could connect with the wide fan Games Workshop fanbase. Its closure has been decried all over the web by gaming fans, and Romain went so far as to call it:
"The last nail in the coffin of proper old style GW painting."
Of course, what with the Forge World and Black Library pages already having gone down I was surprised that this one hadn't disappeared earlier. Still, it does mean that one of the last places for fans to interact with the company is now gone.
What are your thoughts on GW shutting down these Facebook pages?
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Still 40K fanboy at the ripe old age of 41… but despair at the company’s net presence compared to the likes of Corvus Belli (sic?)
Im starting to think GW = Gone Where?
I dont think the GW has the ability to keep up with other popular games tbh, they have caused so many issues in the past imho.
Well their is always the BEASTS OF WAR to go to help out everyone. Lol
I think there’s a clear trend of GW sticking their heads in the sand, but I’m not sure shutting down their facebook pages is the best sign of that. Facebook really is a shitty promotional marketing channel. I always kind of cringe when some hobby company wants me to go their facebook page to see new announcements or something.
Facebook did an extremely good job of suckering companies into using it. Everything was free, every follower saw every post, and many many millions of people use it. So of course companies jumped on, never asking themselves, “What’s the catch?”
Then after everybody got used to reaching their customers through facebook, facebook changed the rules. Now only about 10% of your followers see any one post you create, and you have absolutely no control over who they are (or any means of predicting who it will be). The only way to actually reach your audience through facebook anymore is to pay to promote your posts, which ends up costing more (much more) than if you had spent all that time and effort building a community on your own site who followed your own blog. It’s a terrible place to engage with your customers now unless you want to pay ridiculous amounts of money to make it otherwise.
And if we had all just seen that coming, we never would’ve gone there in the first place. It would have been much cheaper and much more effective to build a smaller community that actually sees our posts. Companies should all be pulling out of facebook (or really, they should be scaling back on facebook as much as they can while building user communities on their own sites where the rug won’t be pulled out from under them). Most companies should never have fallen for the bait in the first place (it was predictable what would happen).
Now GW’s inability to run a good community on their own web properties is pretty damning evidence for their overall marketing and PR strategy failures. But pulling out of facebook is really not that bad.
Don’t disagree with anything you have said – but what the page did do was provide inspiration and that sells a crap tonne more than any amount of planned media. Still working out a ‘squat’ force after seeing someones excellent work using scouts and the new dwarf kits.
Still ‘eavier metal has picked that up nicely
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Sorry … couldn’t resist 😉
It’s not about the promotion aspect of things, or receiving the posts, it’s about having a place to share as a community. Inspirational pictures from fellow gamers are the bread and butter of our hobby… not the merchandise pictures from on high !
Facebook is a terrible place to do that too, Romain. Frankly, every company including GW should have built a community space of their own to host those discussions and share those inspirations. Other companies have. PP’s forums are a pretty good place to see great work, and it’s not all PP models in their painting forums. That GW closes their facebook page is not an indictment of them. That they haven’t built a valuable alternative on their own (and probably aren’t trying to) is.
Facebook is a terrible service for getting any kind of engagement with your audience. It’s a terrible place for sharing inspiration because most of the people following you will never see the inspiring things you post. No matter what your goals are, facebook sucks.
Yeah, apparently they just weren’t interested in having/managing a community, just customers…
I still think GW wishes the internet would just go away
I believe GW wants our money not our opinions 🙂
To be honest the fact it was a group rather than a page, I think GW had forgotten about it until somebody probably highlighted it. It is a shame as these things can be a great tool for the company.
That being said they are also tend to be a conduit for a lot of negativity. I must admit the only time I have gone to the EE Page is to post about when I had lost my service for a day with half of the other country.
I don’t think its the right way for GW to go and if they wanted a larger set of control they could have it restricted with a mail box for questions and answers with scheduled staffers (Codex Writers, Designers, Black Library Authors etc etc) that they then post up on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. But what do we mere mortals know 😉