Sarah, thanks for you comment. I am sorry to hear that people failed you in what I know personally to be one of life's most difficult moments. Indeed, those are the times when our true friends emerge. The outreach strategy I described above should always be used in a way that's respectful and generous. In no way should it be manipulative. The "tactic" is meant to help you keep in step with what they need and want, so that you can be more respectful of where they sit, not less. But always, any tactic is only as good as the level of care and genuine regard for others in the person using it.

Keith, I just stumbled across your site, and your post seems more a strategy for manipulation than a developing a relationship or friendship. It's the kind of tactic that as a professional, I see straight through and reject "outreach" from. There are so many people who apply these tactics to such an end that they forget they're talking to another human. They forget to do simple, human things like express sorrow for another's loss, offer genuine help, or take time to actually know someone. Before I realized this manipulative tactic, I naively believed some of the people in my professional circle with were my friends; you can imagine the hurt I felt when, after my father died, none of them reached out to be with me in such a painful time. People aren't tasks------call this tactic what it is: network outreach. Relationship building, it's not.

I don't necessarily have it written down but I do have a system for following up. Whenever I speak at an event, I take as many photos as I possibly can, upload them to flickr and/or create an Animoto video... Then I blog it and email people a LinkedIn invitation with a link to the event recap post I wrote for the event. This has such a positive impact on my connections with people and our follow up from that point forward. Then, every now and then I check in through LinkedIn or some other form of follow up based on the conversations that we over time.