As the holidays approach, you are probably swamped with year-end work activities and preparing for your own personal celebrations at home. The last thing on your mind may be the thought of purchasing business holidays cards, writing messages and addresses, licking envelopes, and buying stamps. But you may be missing out on a great opportunity.

Not only are holiday cards a fantastic way to spread some cheer during tough times, but they offer a great way to get through to potential new clients, investors and sponsors, renew relationships with media members, and thank valued customers. After all, most people appreciate a personalized holiday card and will open this type of mail.

Now, you may think it will take too much time and cost too much money to send out cards, but with today’s technology, it can be very easy and cost-effective. Some services will even take care of printing and mailing for you! (Check out http://www.printingforless.com/holidaycards.html, http://www.kinkos.com and your local print shop for help.)

And if you are really short on funds, you can always send electronic greetings through Hallmark, Yahoo! and others.

If possible, try to set aside a few hours to create an address list and send out holiday cards in the next few weeks. It may be a lot easier than you think and well worth the effort. Not only will you help build business relationships, but you’ll spread some holiday cheer…and we could all use some of that right now!