Everyone should have the good fortune of a mentor, or mentors. For me, there was an Algerian cook named Sayeed  who I worked with behind the line of a restaurant in Boston’s financial district. The guy must’ve worked 16 hours a day, seven days a week. He was never NOT there. The stories of his time as an Algerian soldier, days without eating, walking through desert heat, death around every corner, made a 116 hour work week at a place where food is never far away, seem like utopia.

While he wasn’t the most influential figure in my life, he did serve as an inspiration for work ethic and a priority authority. I will never forget the line he shared when I chided him about working so much, “Neek (Nick), until my family can be with me in this country, I’ll work 24 hours a day to make it comfortable when they are.”

There was also the concierge of an upscale resort in Newport, RI named Albert, whose unflappability in tense and confrontational situations made people think he was ½ robot and/or a master of transcendental meditation. I learned the value of patience and listening from seeing him routinely turn a disgruntled guest into a relaxed vacationer or productive business traveler, just by turning an open and receptive ear.

While neither one of these gentlemen tutored me through major life changes or decisions, they each instilled valuable life lessons that have followed me personally and professionally.

The Internet can serve a similar mentor role. A commitment to learning should be part of any social media strategy, and the nature of the social web embraces those who can act like a sponge and don’t just assert themselves as a thought-leader before understanding the community. Networks are evolving constantly, tools are introduced and a college curriculum’s worth of content is published daily.

Interestingly, a mentor in today’s society can educate and inspire without ever meeting the mentored. Thanks Internet! In the world of web and insurance marketing, there are countless social media gurus, masters, ninjas, Jedis, assassins, rebels, experts and others running the gamut of social web and marketing acumen. While  many use social media for the sole purpose of broadcasting to others that they are social media experts, in the hopes of being given the chance to actually prove themselves, there are a few sage veterans who I’ve stuck with since my PR agency days, and who will continue to shape the social web going forward.

Most of these suggestions are well-known (for good reason) and already listed on the IMHQ blogroll, but my favorite social media marketing mentors are as follows:

Individual mentors:

Brian Solis – (from the bio) Principal of FutureWorks, an award-winning New Media marketing and branding agency in Silicon Valley. Solis is globally recognized for his views and insights on the convergence of PR, Traditional Media and Social Media

Why I like: Brian looks at social media and marketing from a highly intellectual perspective and is a master at using case studies and analyst/research reports to back up his points. (also, his book Engage has been instrumental in developing recent Astonish Results strategy)

Chris Brogan – (from the bio) President of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency. He works with large and mid-sized companies to improve online business communications like marketing and PR through the use of social software, community platforms, and other emerging web and mobile technologies.

Why I like: Chris has been around since the infancy of social media and has a genuine but incisive approach that makes him extremely approachable. He always seems to pull the best out of other people.

Seth Godin – (from the bio) Mr. Godin has written twelve books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. Every one has been a bestseller. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything.

Why I like: He is the master of thought provocation. Seth’s brief, but always poignant blog entries and Twitter updates serve as inspiration for marketers across the web. Rarely does day pass where you don’t see quotes followed by “Godin” somewhere on the social web. My employer has 11 of his 12 books available to employees.

Olivier Blanchard – (from the bio) As BrandBuilder Marketing‘s principal and senior strategist, I help companies develop, build, integrate, manage and measure Social Media Programs. I also help companies manage their reputations online and offline, and establish leadership in their markets.

Why I like: He tells personal stories that all marketers can relate to and isn’t afraid to stir the pot when it needs to be stirred, sometimes thousands of words at a time.

Mentor Sites:

These sites are well-known to any experienced social media marketer and I would venture to say the constantly updated library of content on these sites far exceeds the knowledge shared in any college classroom over the course of a semester.

Mashable

Social Media Examiner

Outspoken Media blog

SearchEngineJournal

Hubspot Blog

Copyblogger

So that’s my collection of inspiring people and websites. No real shockers, but a solid list if you’re just getting started and want to learn from the true marketing thought leaders.

I’ve obviously done an injustice to hundreds of worthy people and sites, so if you have recommendations for an individual or website mentor, please share it in the comments…

After dying Easter eggs with my son this weekend, I came into the office Monday morning and was greeted by a co-worker with. “Dude, what happened to your fingers, did you get arrested this weekend?” After a long story about how I was chased by the cops and had to jump off a bridge into frigid water before being wrangled into a squad car, I admitted I was joking and clarified the stained fingers.

This Monday morning fun got me thinking about perception. Aside from some cheeky “spokespeople” and omnipresent TV ads, the insurance industry is not exactly a hotbed of viral or social web marketing success stories, nor is it often the topic of discussion by today’s influential marketing minds. Which is why I was elated to see Sonia Simone from Copyblogger offer, The Difference Between Salad and Garbage.

Ms. Simone weaves a tapestry of Woody Allen quotes and practical advice on niche building that insurance professionals at every level can learn from. I especially liked:

“Instead of being a hapless insurance salesman, become the expert on insurance for coffee shops. Or NASCAR drivers. Or lion tamers…You can learn that customer’s language, understand their problems, and get insanely good at resolving the issues they’re most likely to face.”

One of the most powerful returns from an effective social web program is the ability to influence perceptions of your agency. Whether you’ve had negative press, are new to a community or just concerned about perceptions of the industry as a whole, social media can be influential. We’ve discussed having a social web insurance strategy before, so we won’t go down that road, but the idea of influencing people’s perceptions plays right into Ms. Simone’s post about finding and becoming an expert on a specific niche.

If you’re known as the curmudgeonly, style-less  insurance salesman, you have the ability to become the pizza parlor insurance godfather, the liquor store insurance sommelier, the Noah of flood insurance or even the brown gold manure hauling insurance maven. These are all perceptions you can create for yourself or your agency with some creative blogging, Facebook/Twitter status updates, and if you’re lucky, a sense of humor.

Maintaining a casual but professional dialogue with fans and clients is not only good for retention, but good for topical related policy growth (like the flood-inducing monsoons in New England right now). Social media can be the quickest, most efficient way to communicate insurance coverage updates, rate-lowering tips, advice and more without putting much effort into it. And of course, the more you put into it, the better the return since dialogue and conversations ARE the new marketing.

If given the choice, most people would probably prefer being stranded on a desert island with an insurance salesman over, say, a pack of rabid pitbulls.  But we can do better than that. Like ink-stained fingers from egg dying to my previously clean record, industry generalizations and past actions don’t have to define your agency, but they will if you don’t influence them.