In last Sunday's email we looked at a simple method for following up with people after you first connect with them.

Follow-up, you won't be surprised to hear, is incredibly powerful. Keep in touch, keep top of mind, and you can cut out layer upon layer of painful selling and instead be the first person your ideal clients turn to when they need help.

Unfortunately, you're not the only one hoping to do this.

If you want your follow-up to be effective, you have to do it in a way that stands out from what everyone else is doing.

Options: you can do more. Follow-up with more people, more often. 

It works. Most of your competitors are lazy. Work a bit harder and you can have an edge.

Personally though, I don't like working harder.

Better, I find, to follow up differently. 

Phone instead of emailing. Write a letter instead of phoning. Record and send a video instead of a letter. 

Don't send a Facebook message to say happy birthday, send a card (remember them!). Don't do it on their birthday, do it on the anniversary of meeting them.

Introduce two contacts to each other who you think would be able to help each other out. Arrange a dinner for your 8 best business contacts.

None of those ideas are earth shatteringly new, but the chances are that your competitors aren't doing them. I'm sure you could think of 7 ways of following up that are completely unique to you if you sat down and thought about it for a few minutes.

Invest a little bit of time to think of something different you can do to follow up and it will pay you back big time in terms of being memorable.