I’ve been hearing more and more about companies that spend money on microsites, but don’t necessarily feel a need to market their microsite through the various social media channels that are available.

Simply stated, this blog post will address their concerns.

That’s a vacuum chamber. Your microsite shouldn’t live in one.

I’d like to get one thing straight before I begin: Microsites are necessary, especially if one has dynamic information to house. Just remember that hardly anyone will add your site to their RSS reader to get your company updates. They won’t necessarily think to go to your brand’s page to find your videos. Customers may eventually get to your site, but it just won’t happen if it lives in a digital vacuum.

About a year and a half ago, I was hired by the Chicago Tribune to not only determine where Chicagoans were congregating online, but to figure out the best, most effective ways to distribute news in these digital arenas for their consumption. I realized that 99.99 percent of digital conversation about anything — news, a brand, a product, etc. — is happening in a place that’s outside of your control and that it was my responsibility to not only listen to these conversations, but to be an active participant.

My efforts paid off. Not only did traffic to the site grow significantly, but people in Chicago began to feel differently about their very, very traditional hometown news organization. We had all of the credibility in the world, but we were making a concerted effort to gain “digital street cred,” as I call it. Sure, people came to ChicagoTribune.com, but now they had another reason to do so: because they had a relationship with us.

Here are some things I learned:

  • Creating a microsite — or any other kind of site — without a similar, branded social media presence across multiple platforms is akin to printing a newspaper and not delivering it to your customers, news stands and honor racks. It’s not enough to have information in a central location; you must actively deliver it where people already congregate online — and that’s on blogs, in forums and inside of existing social networks like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. (This brings to mind the joke: “If you have a Web site and nobody knows about it, do you really have a Web site?”)

    In order for this to happen, you must give someone an experience they can easily bring with them. If you build a microsite, be sure to include on-site share functionality. (ShareThis is one example.)

  • Successful brands have people talking to them, through them and about them. Successful brands create meaningful digital experiences for customers that inspire them to become your real-world advocates. Successful brands also create and develop meaningful relationships in the real world with customers that can grow online.

  • Create and highlight digital touchpoints with your brand to make your relationships stronger. Do you already have a company Facebook page? A company Twitter page? Are you on YouTube? Promote your other efforts on your site. Cross-promote everything. Microsites have tremendous value, despite the fact that it may cost more to create one than it does to create and maintain several social media profiles. However, if you’re going to build a site, you must find a way to get your content into the digital ether.

Use a Facebook page and a Twitter account to post content — blog posts, announcements, giveaways, etc. — from your site. If you have videos to post, house them in YouTube, and then post them on your microsite. All of your sites are connected.

If you’re building a microsite for your company, your brand or your campaign, find some money left over in your budget to create and develop relevant social media profiles, or find a way to leverage the profiles you already have. You’ll see that your social media profiles will work hand-in-glove with your site, and vice versa, in digital harmony.