The Story of the Barbados Historic Railway Movie

Writing this blog on getting “Your Travel Story on Google News” began with a tour of the St. Nicholas Abbey Heritage Railway. I was looking for interesting content to post to my Lifestyles of the Artisan Instagram Account.

I arrived early and took lots of photographs of the brand new vintage-style train, the engine cars and the station, including the cafe, gift shop and the grounds. The owners of St. Nicholas Abbey had created a replica of history with impeccable taste.

The station platform housed a museum of vintage prints, photographs and diagrams of the original historic railway track, its cars, engines and people. The photos tell a story of the train’s journey with beautiful images of the island.

All excellent material to create a story of the old vintage rails that were the work horses of the sugar industry in the 17th century.

The Heritage Railway Museum

The train departed the station with conductors and drivers all on board. It was short ride to the top of Cherry Tree Hill, where we all disembarked to see the magnificent view of the East Coast where the old train tracks rambled along the coast. Michael Brown, the engineer driver, mingled for a while answering questions.

How many carts were there? “40 at its height”, he said.
How did it carry sugar? In special sugar cars.
What did it cost for passengers?  Ah! All that and more I will cover in my talk in just a few minutes. It started at just one penny and, yes, they did make a profit at first. But they did not reinvest and that, along with other mishaps and acts beyond control, led to the demise of the train.

Michael, as you will see, is a direct person with a keen insight and sense of humor. Check it out at  https://barbados.org/blog/st-nicholas-abbey-heritage-railway/

That video became the feature of the blog that got on Google News. It not only got on News; Google featured it above all advertising and organic listings.

6 Keys to Google News Ranking

1. Articles Published on a High Authority Site. (DA 78) See Explosion
Explosion – a  Google News Approved Website (GNA).  GNA Articles accepted by google get featured in its news.

Importantly it is not our site and we do not take credit for the article. The article is written by a 3rd-party independent journalist. It has much more authority than if we wrote it ourselves.

2. Google summaries the article above the search results. It dominates the page.

3. A related video of the same story is featured under the article link.

4. Our blog linking to the Movie and Story is featured in #1 position of search results.

5. Search result #1  is a Related YouTube video.

6. Search result #2  is the Explosion news item.

NB: Our main blog is not on Page 1 – will examine that in another review coming soon.

Supporting Content & Promotions

1. A Barbados.org Main Story featuring the Movie –
https://barbados.org/blog/st-nicholas-abbey-heritage-railway/

2. A new Barbados.org Blog announces the Movie and Story.
https://barbados.org/blog/new-video-of-barbados-historic-railway

3. The Explosion News Item linking to Above
https://www.explosion.com/133453/barbados-showcases-new-movie-of-the-historic-railway-story/

4. In addition, there are several videos:
The Main Movie was published to Vimeo. A different version is on YouTube. A teaser video of the Turntable is also on YouTube. Several short versions and teasers were published to social media and other collateral.

5. Promoted via Social Media and Syndication
Each of the blogs are syndicated to social media and profile networks. We created and published several versions as Instagram stories, posts and IGTV movies to several Instagram profiles, each promoted with bookmarks (Social Media Announcements)

Content Marketing SEO

All this is straightforward Content Marketing and SEO work.

• The Main article is about 2,000 words
• The Explosion article is over 1,000 words
• The Announcement blog is about 700 words

All are rich media and SEO-optimized.
Word Count is essential as Google looks for deep and wide-ranging content. The articles must covey expert authority and trust.

The Storyteller in the movie is the Star. Michael Brown delivers a fun and engaging narrative – full of historical fact, insights and innuendos. He acts off the rule book and the shows how passengers flagged down the train as if they were  thumbing for a ride in a car today. His humor and joy permeates the story with a delightful Bajan accent and attitude.

The combination of a good story and user on-the-spot capture makes this newsworthy. Creating a current blog article that explains a bit about the story and the movie was the second vital strategy.

Thirdly, posting on a High Authority accredited Google News Approved (GNA) site was pivotal. Both the author and site are independent authorities. Self-promotion just does not work as well. You need independent accredited reviews and articles about your brand. Independent news articles linking to the site was the third vital key to success. That got it in the news.

The supplemental articles and promotions made it stand out as a key piece of content and created social action and traffic that made it stand out and rank above Wikipedia and all top sites.

More About Google News – Tips & Strategies to Get Published

See our article on Google News. Learn how to get approved by Google News. Click Here >>

(C) Ian R. Clayton

Digital Media Author, Blogger – VideoGrapher

Author of Digital Media Book Series