A few weeks ago I had a wonderful opportunity for a short vacation — a roadtrip. The back story is that a good friend of mine that has lived in Chicago for the last 8 years had made the decision to move to Burlington, Vermont. (For the record, yes, a gal is also involved in this story…and a great gal at that.) So dubbing this “Operation: Love Connection,” I flew to Chicago on a Wednesday, with the help of some good friends packed him up on Thursday and three of us hit the road. The next day and 950 miles later, we pulled into Burlington.

Along the way and with the help of my trusty iPhone, I decided to pull out all the stops with my various social media identities and have a little fun.

Photosharing: This was a big part of the experience. Armed with my new favorite iPhone photo app Histamatic, I had a great time documenting the trip. Below are a few of my favorite pics. While I maintain a Flickr account, I primarily use that as my cloud-based photo repository. For the trip, I was pushing my “in the moment” pics to Facebook and Twitter. Why? Read on…

Facebook: Along the way it was great to hear the feedback from my friends, words of encouragement for my buddy, and the excitement from his girlfriend that were getting closer with every passing hour…while at the same time reassuring everyone interested that we were all safe and sound. The jokes, the comments, the simple “likes” all made the trip interesting and engaging for us. (It bears repeating: 950 miles, people.)

Foursquare: As the newest addition to my social media repertoire, I had been a little standoffish with Foursquare before this trip. Not so afterward. While I had found checking in to places around KC to be a bit tedious and unnatural — I’m a working stiff, folks…married with kids…I go to work, I go home, lather/rinse/repeat — it was a lot of fun on the road to “collect” locations. One of the most interesting moments was when I was riding the red line L from downtown to my friend’s apartment. At the Addison stop, I decided to check in at Wrigley Field. The interesting part was when I immediately received a “to do” suggestion that one of my Foursquare friends had left at that location to “try a hot dog and a beer or three on a hot day.” It was the equivalent of plucking a message in a bottle from the surf and finding out it was from someone I know. Though I was in a place that was out of the realm of my normal experiences, the world felt a little smaller…a little more connected to me all of a sudden. It was a good feeling.

Twitter: This has become my go-to place for “in the moment” brain droppings. I also have my social media setup wired to push my Twitter updates to Facebook, like many multi-platform users do. The most interesting moment I had with Twitter is when we crossed the border into Vermont and I offered this innocuous announcement:

In short order — as in 3 minutes — I received an email that @VermontTourism was now following me on Twitter. And then I saw this:

Some might find that creepy, but I found it warm and welcoming. Just to see if @VermontTourism was paying attention, I dashed out a reply:

To which I received this:

Well played, @VermontTourism. Points for listening to the chatter and reaching out to engage appropriately. The effort was definitely appreciated.

All in all, it was a great trip and a wonderful opportunity to kick the tires on mobile social media. I can’t neglect to mention that my iPhone was the device that made all this possible. In fact, I did bring my laptop with me for the trip but didn’t open it once.

Reflecting back on my personal use cases of these apps/platforms, it all added an additional layer of interest to the whole trip that was spent mostly listening to XM radio, laughing and catching up with dear friends and enjoying the adventure of it all. As a digital strategist, it’s certainly planted some seeds in my mind and sparked some interesting ideas and possible applications for clients.

P.S. At the Burlington airport on Sunday, there was one last goodbye I had to make. And yes, the next day, I received a nice reply.