This year, we as marketers gave *a lot*.

Now that we’re content marketers, storytellers and social community managers, we’re constantly pouring out (as well as being ‘always on’, checking social updates).

Not only do we need to do our ‘regular’ jobs as marketers – providing analysis, results and reports back to our CxOs – but now we also have to have emotional intelligence and emotional capacity to stay in relationship with followers and lead them on a journey of becoming.

We’re now being squeezed at both ends.

That’s a tall order in anyone’s language and something that marketers who came before us never had to do.

Yet the principles that govern all relationships still apply even in the digital realm – you can’t take out more than what you put in.

As a result we now find ourselves constantly pouring out and quite often don’t see that heart and effort reciprocated or appreciated by bosses or fans.

Even though we know this is our ‘job’, even though we know that the realm is digital and even though we know that followers are not necessarily our friends, there’s something inside us that still quietly opposes having to give and give and give and not see that constant giving returned.

If we’re not getting anything back, its tempting to withdraw.

To withhold.

To stop giving.

To give up.

If you find you’re the one constantly giving and are wondering who’s giving to you, the good news of today is that it was to us, over two thousand years ago, that a Saviour was given.

This Saviour broke the cycle of ‘eye for an eye’ and ‘give in order to receive’.

For God so loved the world that He gave us His only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life – John 3:16

Because a loving God chose to go first and give His best, His Son, to us – before we could give anything back to Him – we now have a well to draw from, when we find that, in and of ourselves, we have nothing left to give.

Because we have been given to with no strings attached, we can now give with no strings attached.

Freely we have received, freely we can give.

Because God went first, we can go second.

May your life be filled with the love you deserve this Christmas.

Marketers – I honour and thank you for all you gave the world this year!