Abstract: Distributed coordination control of multi-agent systems raises fundamental and novel problems in recent years. A great new challenge is the development of robust distributed motion algorithms. In this study, a distributed control strategy for connectivity preserving coordinated motion of multi-agent system is presented by introduction small-world connections among mainly local interactions. For arbitrary initial network topology, the group consists of several connected subgroups. Some agents are modeled as virtual leader and steer the disconnected subgroup to flock together. In this way, flocking problem can be solved under more relaxed conditions, which need no the connectedness of the dynamic topology all the time, even the connectedness of the initial graph. Further, we show that the strategy is robust against connection failures between followers and leader in the leader following coordination control. Simulation results are given to validate the method.