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It’s true, everywhere you look you’ll see an iPhone, Blackberry, Android or Windows phone. You either love them or hate them, but one thing's for sure - If you have one, you’re not using it as well as you could be.

If you know me, you'll know what's coming next. Let me put on my marketers hat and outline 16 ways to make your smart phone work harder for you so you can benefit personally and in business.

Here are a few tips so you can get more value out of your smart phone -

1. Education
While driving in the car, listen to audio books on your phone.  Public libraries have a huge variety of audio books you can check out for two weeks or more. Free Software, Overdrive Media Console, has mobile phone app's to support this.

2. Paperwork
After completing forms or paper work while out of the office (and the form is not electronic), snap a photo of it and email it back to the office for immediate data entry.

3. Record meetings
Visually and/or verbally document meetings and save the file for future reference.

4. Show videos to clients
Help sell products or services to clients by showing them videos and pictures stored on your phone.

5. Visual records
A great idea for so many businesses – for example real estate and auto repair. Take before and after photos or photos of products or people. On the personal side use it between home and shopping. Take a photo of a salad dressing your partner wants you to buy. Snap an item of clothing and send as an multimedia message (mms) to your child or spouse before buying to see if they approve. FiPhone

6. Office away from office
Your phone does about 80% of what your computer does. Drop box can store documents online eg. use Gmail documents.

7. Social media
All smart phones have free app's for social media giving you access to contribute when you’re out. A perfect example is when out networking, at functions, or with a client – you can upload photos, videos, tweet or talk about the occasion.

8. Live testimonials
Most businesses - especially the self employed - have too few testimonials, and feel reticent to ask a client to take the extra effort. Why not record the testimonial while the person is saying it. Just a quick little - oh please, do you mind if I catch what you’re saying on video (or simply a voice recording). This bit of gold can then be uploaded to your website, to YouTube. The link can be emailed and written in proposals and quotes. You can transcribe verbatim what was said and send it back to them via a file for them to print off and sign.

9. Built in GPS
Why buy a system for your car when you already have one built into your phone?

10. Get quicker responses
Use sms more – it saves time and money, it's instantly received and is okay to use in most business contexts.

11. Personal aides
There’s thousands of applications you can get to aid you in dieting, fitness, exercise, calorie counting. Alarms to wake you, night lights or compasses to steer you. Museums to walk through and virtual apps to show you ratings on restaurants or where the next cafe is located.