How Jason and Kelli Krafsky of Maple Valley became the Social Media Couple

Published 10:23 am Friday, April 8, 2011

It started off as an effort to provide a tool for couples venturing out into social media together, specifically the popular social networking site Facebook, but for Maple Valley couple Jason and Kelli Krafsky it has grown into a broader mission.

A year ago the Krafskys published a book called “Facebook and Your Marriage,” a guide book for couples intended to start conversations about all kinds of situations that come up while using Facebook.

“When we came out with the book, it was really to empower couples, how to use Facebook, how to set guardrails and alleviate some of the marriage drama,” Jason said.

Since the book was published a year ago, the media has embraced the work the Krafskys have done, starting with an article in the Reporter that led to an interview on KOMO.

“That opened up a door because it got us on camera,” Jason said. “We had several interviews that happened in the first few months.”

Kelli said that this effort began because when they began researching the concept, all they saw was negative reports about Facebook.

“We saw it as an opportunity to write something positive,” she said. “Nobody in our marriage field had even written about it.”

Then in June at the Smart Marriages conference in Orlando, Fla., the couple did a full-fledged unveiling of the book and its companion website.

“From that, that really opened up all kinds of doors for speaking,” Jason said.

Kelli added, “We don’t even have a publicist. It’s all coming to us.”

A number of big orders came in from the book and the slate of speaking gigs began.

They were contacted by a group asking Jason and Kelli to talk to spouses of deployed military personnel about how to use Facebook during that time of separation “because that is a primary way for couples to communicate during deployment,” Jason said.

The Krafskys spoke at a base in Oklahoma in November, talking to spouses about Facebook for couples dealing with deployment as well as a seminar for parents.

In the middle of that last fall, Jason explained, he got an email from Facebook asking them to tweak their website address because of trademark ownership.

At the same time, he said, they were expanding their mission beyond just helping couples navigate Facebook.

“We’d just come off of this fantastic summer,” Jason said. “At this conference we got linked with a distributor for the book. In August we were out in New York and signed a deal with a distributor.”

In November the book began to be marketed on a mass scale, including showing up on shelves at major book stores such as Barnes & Noble, so things were going well.

And as the speaking engagements picked up, they began to talk to groups beyond couples about social networking, with the idea of helping people in all of their relationships and technology.

For example, they spoke at a church in California, where they put on five mini seminars.

“We realized that while this is an exciting topic, it can be very overwhelming, so we created a series of mini seminars on different topics for where people are in (their use of Facebook),” Jason said. “One was geared toward young singles and how your relationships can survive and thrive on Facebook. Then we did one with couples. Saturday afternoon we did one with grandparents, everything grandparents need to know about Facebook. On Sunday Morning we spoke to 700 teenagers, junior high and high schoolers, on dealing with Facebooking parents and other Facebook drama.”

It was important, especially as parents of teens themselves, for Jason and Kelli to convey to the teens that what they post to Facebook is viewed by college admissions officers and potential employers and that “you can really wreak havoc on your future” by posting the wrong things to Facebook.

With this broadening approach along with the requests of Facebook for them to make some changes that wouldn’t infringe on its trademarks, the Krafskys decided in the fall to go beyond the original “Facebook and Your Marriage” concept they had developed.

“It actually made a lot of sense for us to rebrand as the Social Media Couple,” Jason said. “There’s so many issues related to this. So, we came up with a term called ‘techlationships.’ How do we use our technology to bring ourselves closer. Technology and relationships go hand in hand.”

They started a blog at techlationships.com and launched it last month. One of the first articles to appear was one about a statistic that has been floating around claiming that one out of five divorces can be attributed to Facebook.

“We got some international attention on the piece just last month debunking the one in five (myth),” Jason said. “We’ve had all kinds of media opportunities. We’ve done live stuff, Internet radio, we were in Boston Parents magazine, Washington Times, Seattle P-I.com, the Oregonian.”

Jason said that early on people asked them, “What about Facebook and Your Teenager?”

It’s an issue they plan to tackle in the future.

Kelli said that parents and teachers are just beginning to see the impact social network usage is having on kids. The couple have four children and two of them are teens.

“You think about families and parents and their relationships with their teenagers,” she said. “We’re in the thick of that, so, for us it’s a real passion; how do we stay connected with our kids through technology? This is all kids today have ever known so we need to come on board.”

And it’s something she’s learning about first hand from other parents.

“I had a friend of mine she happened to go on her son’s profile, he left it open, but, she was reading through it and found out her son was going to be in a fight the next day at school,” Kelli said. “It allowed her that night to call some of the teachers and say, ‘Hey, I need you to look out and protect my son.’”

Jason said they plan to continue to speak on social media topics often this year, as well as put out more tools as well as create additional resources for anyone to tap into and to use techlationships.com to report on what’s happening in the social media universe “so we can help people avoid the mistakes others have made.”

“The blog is going to be an area where we’re going to focus a lot of our attention,” he said. “There’s nothing that brings (relationships and technology) together. Relationships and technology are so interconnected now. And what we do through technology is different than how we do things live. As we stay on top of this, it’s just trying to figure out, what does the world need? It doesn’t need another book. It needs more tools. It needs more help.”

For more information, visit Jason and Kelli’s website, http://techlationships.com/ or http://socialmediacouple.com