Andrea Taylor from the Public Information Department interviews Kat Hudson, our Web Content Specialist.
Andy
Hello everybody. My name is Andrea Taylor, and I’m the public relations assistant for the Confederated Tribes Siletz Indians. And today I have Katrina Hudson. Katrina, how are you?
Kat
I’m doing good today. How are you?
Andy
I’m well. All right. Katrina, you go by Kat, right?
Kat
I do go by Kat. Yeah.
Andy
Okay. So I’ll call you Kat. cat, what do you do here? What’s your, department? And how long have you been here?
Kat
Yeah. my, my job title is the web content specialist. I work under the IS Department, and I have worked for the tribe for about four, I think, a little over four and a half years. I started in February of 2020.
Andy
Yes. You did. so, Kat, let’s get to know you a little bit. What are what’s your favorite hobby? What are some of your favorite hobbies? Some of that?
Kat
Yeah. I enjoy beading. I’ve been doing a lot of that, lately, and kind of my, my main hobby. I’m also, it’s not really a hobby, but, I’ve been going back to school and doing a lot of, video content work with that. So doing, like video editing and things like that and trying to, like, shoot some video.
And so sometimes that’s a hobby, sometimes that’s, more, more work and more homework. But it’s, it’s been a lot of fun.
Andy
Do you have a favorite book or at least a favorite genre that you like to read?
Kat
I’ve been trying to read more books lately. it’s been a little while since I’ve, done some reading, a one book that stands out back in high school, and I was doing more reading, that, always stuck with me. That it’s one of my favorites is, Johnny got his Gun, which is a really, really cool book that I really enjoyed.
I should probably read it again. but I know I’m so bad with genres, I just kind of read whatever seems interesting to me. Maybe more like fantasy type, but, we should do some more reading. because I just haven’t been, it’s one of my hobbies that I like to, to do more of, but. And just haven’t had the time lately.
Andy
No, that’s real. I think I had a discussion with. I wanna say it was Dan on, our podcast where he said that he just doesn’t read. He’s like, I don’t read as, like I read in school. And I was like, I want to read more. I just don’t have the time to take so much dedication, and there’s just not enough time.
Kat
Exactly. Yeah. I just, finished, a book. It wasn’t very good, but, I it took me such a long time to read it, and, I kind of wish it was. I chose a different book because it’s like the first book that I’ve read in such a long time, and I didn’t I didn’t enjoy it.
Andy
I get that wasted it. Right? You’re like, wasted effort.
Kat
Yeah.
Andy
Yeah. All right. Do you have a favorite vacation that you’ve ever taken?
Kat
Yeah. It’s, was actually somewhat recently. last spring break, we went down to California. and, to visit some some family. Oh, back some.
Andy
Vacation.
Kat
Or so. I was down in California. We went to San Francisco. It’s kind of like in between the, San Francisco and, Sacramento.
Andy
And Alameda and Oakland, etc. area.
Kat
Yeah, yeah, that that area. Okay. my fiance’s sister down there and, my son got to play with his cousins. We spent a whole week down there, and that was that was a lot of fun. Got to go visit San Francisco and go to the, there’s a science museum out there that was super, super cool. you could spend a whole day and more there, and that that was a lot of fun to go, spend, like, a whole week out there.
Kat
We’re gonna plan to go down there again, visit some more. So that was a lot of fun.
Andy
Good. That does sound fun. There’s so much offered in big cities like that. You can’t be bored.
Kat
Yeah, yeah, lots to do.
Andy
All right, well, let’s start diving into our questions and get started on on our podcast. And talk about our agenda, I guess what we got going. So, my first question for you is let’s talk about what a web content specialist does. What are your main duties or your main focus?
Kat
Yeah. my like main areas that I handle are managing and updating the website. the CTSI website and our social media pages, and we’ve got our Facebook pages, a couple Instagram pages and, our, Vimeo account, which has our, our videos on there that you can either go in there and watch them or some of them are like private but embedded on different parts of the website.
And that’s kind of the, the main focus. but I do a lot of like random things I do at the, live streaming for the Tribal council, the regular meeting and also the General council meeting. that’s another, main part of my role. And then, you know, other miscellaneous things.
Andy
Yeah. There there seems to be a lot according, you know, to what staff do. And “we’ll we’ll just ask Kat. We’ll just ask Kat.†So I know that there’s a lot of aspects of the job, because you create all of our, a lot of our graphics for events. Right?
Kat
Yeah. Yeah. that is, a.
Andy
Lot of.
Kat
Things, kind of goes with the, the social media management. I do a lot of the fliers for, the clinic education, along with some of the other departments. but I mainly do fliers for, education and, the clinic. And I’ve worked with the education department on making some, like, graphics for some of the items that they give away for, like, the student gathering.
And, I think some of those things, they also sell for their, scholarship fund to their have been making those and they get posted on our social media pages. And then also some of them, go to the, the newspaper and the newsletter and so they’re kind of like multi functioning in that way.
Andy
And we got to get the word out there as much as possible. Right.
Kat
Yeah. That’s a portion of my job is kind of like I don’t work with you guys in public information, but having like a little bit of, that communication aspect, trying to get the word out with. We’ve got our, clinic newsletter. I also run that, and make that for the clinic that we have online trying to think of.
Kat
I’ve got anything else going on that I do.
Andy
You do the reader board as well, out here in Siletz. Correct?
Kat
That. That’s true. yeah. The reader board that’s near admin. I update that and so people will send me, send me stuff to, to post on there. So I get that out on there and the the clinic also has these new waiting room, like screens that are there and a lot of the information that’s like old on that is through the company that, I think it’s called Patient Point. They, they have content that’s already kind of pre-made on there. but if we have things specific to let’s or the clinic or just information that they want out there, then I can add that on there and, try to get the word out that way as well.
Andy
I’m not gonna lie. I know about those screens, and it used to have cartoons, and I could sit there and watch Moana while I was waiting for my appointment, at a coloring table with other kids. And that was taken away from me.
Kat
Oh, no.
Andy
Personal opinion there. Now, all right, so let’s talk about the website. We used to have the old website. It has fallen out of favor because the website was just so outdated. And we have this wonderful, new, vibrant website that you helped launch. probably paid played a main key, component to getting that up and going.
Why is having that functioning website so important?
Kat
Yeah. it’s vital to have a website that is easy to maneuver around and easy to find information on. because there’s so many like, there’s a lot of good information that’s on the website for people to see what resources are available to them or, you know, just even something as simple as like finding contact information to ask staff about what’s available to them.
And, you know, we’ve got our forms on there and the whole website as it was, you couldn’t use it on your phone. A lot of people are using their phone to search online now, and with our new website, you’re able to do that relatively easy. I hope. and so if a website isn’t easy to navigate around and it isn’t like functional as it is, you’re not going to go on it, you know, and so I’m hoping and I think there might be some people that are still like, don’t go on the website.
They just got into the habit of not going on the website because it wasn’t functional for such a long time. And I’m hoping that, you know, more and more people start visiting it and seeing what’s available to them on there and learning more about, you know, the programs that we have, because there’s so many amazing programs that are being run by so many different departments and there’s, a lot to learn and a lot to see that’s available.
Andy
Yeah, I, I always tell people I’ve always defer to the new website. I go to the website, it has everything you want and it has a functioning search bar. So if you can’t find it immediately, within, you know, the first minute type in search for the search bar will take you directly to it. And you guys also have like document filling too, so you can find the enrollment form and fill it out now online and submit it via email to enrollment, which is just awesome.
I love how handy it is.
Kat
Yeah, yeah. Some of our forms that we have on there, just depending on the nature of the form, you can fill it out right on the website and submit it through the website, or, we’ve got some fillable PDFs on there that you can use to type in your information and sign in and then email it in and, or, you know, if it’s one of the forms that you just have to, like, print out.
And sometimes if you contact a staff member too, they can mail it to you. You know, there’s a lot of different ways that you can, you know, get your forms. And it’s true. Having those options. Yeah.
Andy
All right. So how long has the new website been up and running?
Kat
Yeah. The, I just looked you up this morning. the new website, was launched in August of 2021.
Andy
So quite some time now at this point, it’s been three years.
Kat
Yeah. Yeah. Good. And you know, trying to make improvements as we see we need and there’s been like, you know, a couple different times where we need to tweak some things. So we want to adjust as needed. And make things as functional and easy for people to use as possible.
Andy
Well, I thank you for that. It’s nice. so what is your favorite feature of the website?
Kat
Yeah, I don’t know if it’s necessarily a feature, but one of my favorite, sections on the website is our news and Events area, because we have our, newsletters are posted there. You can, actually read them on the website now so you don’t have to download a PDF or go on a desktop. You can just like flip through it on your phone right there on the website, which is really neat.
Kat
the podcast is posted in there, the calendar is there, and the newspaper is there. So there’s a lot of good information. occasionally something on the current events page will be posted as like a kind of like a blog post on there where you can, read about miscellaneous things that don’t necessarily fit on other parts of the website.
Better, more like time sensitive type things. so there’s a lot of like a lot of good information. And I think it might be, a little underutilized to, in some aspects, but there’s, there’s a lot of good, good stuff there to, to learn about what’s going on.
Andy
I personally love the news and events tab myself. so I guess I go to my next question is, what do you think was an underused or undervalued feature of the website? And I think you kind of answered that unless you have another suggestion on something that is just so useful, but not utilized as well as it could be.
Kat
Yeah. I don’t know if it’s necessarily underused. but I have seen, people kind of having a misconception thinking that they need to request a login to go into the member area. But for the vast majority of people, your login is already in there. And so you can just go on our website, go to the member area, login with your info and you can see the, the information that’s in the member area.
And there’s some good stuff in the member area too. That’s where you can view our, tribal council meeting live streams, the resolutions and minutes. And there’s some really cool, culture videos that are from past, culture camps when we were doing them virtually. So there’s a lot of really cool stuff in the member area. And for most people, your login is already in there.
So if you, for whatever reason, can’t get logged in, there is a contact form that you, that will get sent to me and I can check on it for you and I can get you in there. If for whatever reason you’re logging isn’t working. But, for the most part, you don’t have to request a login. You’re already in there, and you can check out the member area.
Andy
And I know for a fact that you get back pretty quickly on those because I had a tribal member ask me why their login wasn’t working, and it’s just like your rule number and the last for your social, which is not saved. Our member now and in there as a password and they were like, it’s not working, it’s not working.
Andy
What do I do? And I’m like, well, it says to contact the webmaster. And that would be Kat and her email is at the bottom. And I think it was like a day or two later they were like, we got it resolved. So, yeah, we can ask that people on that. That’s not going nowhere.
Kat
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I try to be pretty responsive to people and get them in there.
Andy
well let’s move on to our socials. You are in charge of posting info and keeping members up to date on our socials. What you had kind of discussed it already, but can you tell me, what all we have?
Kat
Yeah, we’ve got a variety of Facebook pages. That’s where our main, social presence is, is on Facebook. And so we technically have ten different pages on there. Some of them aren’t as, frequently updated. And I think it’s just, some maintenance that we need to do on them. But we’re pretty active on our So Health Clinic Facebook page.
A lot of events are posted on there. And so that’s, that’s a good page to follow to keep up to date on what’s going on, because they they do a lot of great events over at the clinic. And we also have our main CTSI Facebook page, which kind of encompasses the tribe as a whole, that is, pretty regularly updated and the area offices each have their own Facebook page.
Those ones are managed more by the, the staff at those offices. I do the Portland area one because I work out of the Portland area office. but the Salem one, Salem takes care of, occasionally I’ll post things on the, Eugene and Salem one, but for the most part, they’re maintained by Eugene and Salem.
And then we have a youth activities and education. I believe it’s the name of the page that we post things for education and also other youth related events on there. So there’s a lot of good, info if you’re if you’re on Facebook, not everybody is on Facebook, because we try to make sure that things that are posted on Facebook are also posted on or not posted, but in the newsletter and the newspaper as well.
So we kind of just cross platform all of these, different events. So we try to get the info out to as many people as possible.
Andy
It’s good efforts for sure, right?
Kat
Yeah. Trying to it.
Andy
All right. So are there any policies around social media and what gets posted.
Kat
Yeah, we do have a social media policy. we try to keep the info that’s posted on there limited to things that are either published by us or other, local government, like sometimes on the for example, on the clinic page, we’ll post things from the Oregon Health Authority or other like health organizations, or like community organizations that are doing some like sometimes they’ll be doing events that, you know, community members might be interested in and, you know, try to keep things very professional on there, respond to things in a timely manner, you know, stuff like that.
And so we do have, a social media policy that, that we are, that we’re following on there, that.
Andy
And so how many of our Facebook pages officially run by CTSI do we have, and how do we determine what is official versus community run?
Kat
Yeah, that is a great question. we’ve got ten official pages on Facebook. We have two official Instagram pages. one of them’s for the clinic, and then one of them is for the youth activities and education. And then we have our Vimeo page. Those pages are linked on our website. So you can know that they’re an official page because, if you go on the current events page, which is under News and Events are good information there. If you go down to the very bottom of that page, we have our social media pages linked on there. And so that’s how, you know, like for sure, for sure that that’s an official page. There are some non-official pages and groups on Facebook and generally, we don’t have a lot of groups. I, I believe, the clinic has our community health group and, during the lockdown when we weren’t doing in-person events, our main CTSI page had, I believe, two groups that we made on there.
But for the most part, we don’t utilize groups. It’s mainly pages. And so to know if it’s an official group or not is when you go on the Facebook group, if you go under the about section and you scroll down, if the admin isn’t a official page, one of our official pages, it it’s not an official group.
And, another sign that you can tell from that is on the groups, people will be posting instead of like a page name. And if, people are posting, like sometimes the groups will have some moderation. and you know, that just varies from group to group on Facebook regardless. But, the posts aren’t as regulated on there.
So there is can be a wide variety of information or topics or, you know, subject matter in discussion posted on their, and so those, those are what the, the groups are for. And there’s some community run groups, but those aren’t ran by us and they’re not affiliated with us.
Andy
Thank you for that clarification and information, because sometimes there’s always that we need a distinctive line. I think I need it sometimes to on what is official and what is community run. And there was some really good information I just gave was like, like, for instance, running, you know, a person would post and say Andy Taylor posted instead of ctc.gov, which is a good way to distinguish.
So thank you. are there any final thoughts or is there anything that you think we missed that we should talk about that? You think that would be important for our listeners to know?
Kat
I would if you haven’t already, I would recommend people to just, you know, go on the website, spend like 15 minutes just going on there and kind of clicking around. if you haven’t familiarized yourself with the website yet, and if you have any feedback about, like, this thing is a little confusing for me and I need some clarification on this, or I think this would function a little bit better if, it looked a little differently.
We we do have a feedback form on the website. if you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page, there’s a little, link there that I think it says, like contact the webmaster or something like that. And that feedback comes back to me, you know, if you if you’re seeing an issue, I’d love to, you know, hear your thoughts on it.
And, like I said, we want to be continually improving the website. We don’t want to just like, pop it up and be like, alright, this is how it’s going to be for the next ten years. we want to be, constantly improving it, but, I would definitely recommend people to go on there and, you know, just just spend a little time, like searching, or even if you want to break it into, like, okay, I’m going to like, look up this section of the website because there’s a lot of pages on there, under different departments.
And like it’s been really educational for me. when I was building the website, seeing all of the different programs that are available to us, I learned a lot about what’s available and what’s going on. but the tribe, just by making the website and putting all the information in there and so I, I would definitely recommend people to, you know, just play around on the website for a bit.
Andy
Great advice. Thank you.
Kat
And follow us on Facebook. yeah. If you have Facebook, we, try to post, the events that are going on or just updates to people on there. we can get things out to people, right as they happen on our Facebook page. So if we’ve got, like, a really, time sensitive update and we’re trying to get that info out, you can post it on our Facebook page. So if you do have a Facebook follow us, you can find the main, Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indian’s Facebook page, either by going to the current events page on Under News and Events. Scroll to the bottom. We have our like little Facebook embed feed on there. That’s our page there. Or if you’re going on Facebook, you can search CTSI.gov.
And that’s our little like little tag name on there. and our, our page is just called Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians with their logo on there. If you go on there, kind of scroll down, make sure that information matches up on there. It’s a it’s a page, not a group. but you can follow us on Facebook there if you’re out in one of the area offices, we have our area office pages.
If you are either a higher education student or you have tribal youth or you are a tribal youth, we’ve got our youth activities and education page that has, good information posted on there. It’s not all just for like, tribal youth. We also have like scholarship information and grant information posted on there. if you’re interested in what the clinic is doing, the clinic page is really great.
There’s a lot of information posted on there. So if you have social media, if that’s your thing, follow us on. Follow us on Facebook.
Andy
All right. So I just have one final question for you, Kat. I know that you are a tribal member, but also a tribal staff. So what is your favorite tribal event that you’ve been to either one time or an annual event, that you just you love?
Kat
Yeah. I, I went to run to the road for the first time this, this last year, and it was such an amazing experience. And I’d always been, like, a little nervous about it. And like, always, you know, thought like, oh, this would be cool to go to. But I didn’t really know, like how it worked. And, wasn’t like, terribly close to anybody that I could, like, go and be like, can I, can I tag along with you like, this is okay, but, this year I went to it and we did some, some filming during it, and it was just the most incredible experience.
And like, just feeling so close to your community and the land and ending, sorry. And that, like, I started insulates. And I did the whole, you know, going down the whole Coast Range, into the Agnes area, and it was just like the coolest thing. and so I think that is my, my favorite tribal event now, before I, I would have said powwow, because that that’s always a special time of year, going out.
And I still very much love powwow. Our powwow is one of my, favorite powwows that I’ve been to. But rent to the rogue was just so amazing and definitely going to be going to that every year that I can from now on.
Andy
Yeah, I’m glad to hear that. It was obviously a great experience.
Kat
Yeah, definitely.
Andy
Well, I think that that wraps up our podcast. Thank you so much for meeting with me today and and just helping our listeners understand our website and our socials and get to know you a little more.
Kat
Yeah. Thank you so much. It was great getting to talk with you. And hopefully, encourage some people to play around on the website. Follow us on there. And, you know, if you have any feedback or anything like that, you can either email me at Katrinah@ctsi.nsn.us. Or like I said, I’ve got a little contact tab at the very bottom of the the website that you can also contact me through.
Andy
Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day.
Kat
Awesome. Thanks. Bye.