Evening events are a great opportunity for association members and other business leaders to meet and mingle. But what do you do if your once-booming events are growing smaller and smaller? Chamber consultant Christina Green, writing for Frank J. Kenny’s chamber development blog, has some quick fixes to bolster those thinning crowds.

The first step may be to dial back the number of events you’re hosting.

“If you have one every month, members promise themselves they’ll make the next one, and crowds will be thinner,” Green writes. “If you reduce the amount to every couple of months, it becomes a much bigger deal on your members’ calendars.”

And then there’s the importance of email notifications, even in the age of social media hype.

“Send out a ‘Looking forward to seeing you tonight’ email to all who are planning on attending,” Green advises. “Create a list of attendees, including names and business names, and share it with others. Not only will members want to be on that list, it allows people to see ahead of time who they want to network with.”

For more insights and recommendations, read Green’s full post here.

Slideshow of the Day

What trends are affecting associations’ social media efforts? Online community management expert Maggie McGary has brought the presentation she gave during a panel at last week’s Association Trends Live breakfast to the web to answer that question. Read through her slides above, or check out her full blog post here.

Other Good Reads

Looking to up your nonprofit expertise? Check out this October roundup of 26 free webinars, via the association and nonprofit software firm Wild Apricot. Topics include the fundamentals of getting grants, effective board governance, and brand ambassadorship.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), the protocol that secures communications across the internet, will be applied to all sites using the content-delivery network CloudFlare, for free, by the end of today. CloudFlare’s rollout of Universal SSL will double the number of sites currently using SSL, and your association’s site may be among them.

Today is National Coffee Day, and while groups such as the National Coffee Association are celebrating (not to mention coffee hounds across the world), Inc. magazine reporter Laura Montini spills the java beans on the possible downsides of that cup of joe sitting on your desk right now.

(Robert Churchill/ThinkStock)