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Ever since the Swedish home store IKEA first set up shop on American soil more than 25 years ago, it has offered customers not only its furniture, but its full-fledged Scandinavian shopping and dining experience. (Swedish meatballs and a glass of lingonberry juice, anyone?) Thanks to its early efforts in innovating a unique retail experience, IKEA has earned a loyal following. But for those new consumers getting their home furnishing cues from experts in magazines, online and on TV, the brand has had to amp up its efforts.

Build it and they will come. That’s the idea behind SiMan, an 18-foot tall, 700-pound glowing behemoth built and decorated by attendees over two days at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) held this past September in San Francisco’s Moscone Center. It was a simple way to engage and inform attendees about a more complicated concept—intelligent connected solutions and embedded technology that is key to the future of computing. SiMan helped drive the message home.

When it comes to brand name recognition, it’s tough to compete with the “verbs.” Like Google, the search engine that became so synonymous with surfing the web that the Oxford English Dictionary made the company’s name a bonafide verb in 2006.

Whether you’re activating a consumer event, a trade show or a conference, Twitter can be a highly effective way to generate excitement, increase awareness and keep in touch. But that’s hardly all the social media tool is capable of. Today, event marketers are pioneering ever more innovative ways to use the power of Twitter to broaden reach, boost consumer engagement, leverage strategic partnerships and drive trial.

Read on for seven fresh ways to transform Tweets into tactics.

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are all quickly becoming vital contributors to b-to-b event programs. As attendee communication tools, channels for fast and cost-effective content propagation and forums for feedback and real-time troubleshooting, mainstream social media is changing the way conferences and user events get planned and managed. But for many event marketers, the strategic value of LinkedIn still remains a mystery. Is it a pure networking tool for industry job seekers?