TILDA SUCCESS STORIES

— Hi, my name is Angela Hollowell. I am the founder of ANG H. studio. I am originally from Alabama and I live in Durham, North Carolina where I run a digital media production company. I really love learning about entrepreneurship. I love making documentary films and I've always had a love for photography, which is how I started as a creator.

I see myself as the can‑do‑it to other people's stories as a visual storyteller. I really feel that it's important for me to work with individuals, communities, and organizations that are centered on amplifying the voices of the communities that they serve.

— Way back in 2015, I studied abroad, in Spain, and when I came back, I realized that I lost every picture I had from that trip. And I said, "I never wanna do that again!" So I worked the whole summer and I spent my check on a camera and I haven't looked back since.

It really just started as a passion, as a hobby to document my travels and document my life as I was growing into adulthood. And then it became something that I got a little more serious about and just really trying to find my way with it and learn and challenge myself and create an impact with my work outside of myself.

I got my Master's in the anthropology of peace and human rights. And I really got a taste of the broad spectrum that is human rights, everything from environmental justice, health, equity, homelessness, housing in healthcare, etc.

And when I finished my Master's and I really knew I wanted to get more serious doing photography and filmmaking, I thought, "Well, how can I combine these two things into one thing and make a career out of it?"

And that's kind of where documentary photography and filmmaking came out for me, which was working with underrepresented, underserved communities and telling their stories in a way that is digestible, in a way that motivates people to act, and in a way that inspires people to create change in their own communities.

— I have two websites with Tilda. One of them is for my business Ang H. Studio, and one of them is for me, Angela Hollowell. I really wanted to have dedicated space on the web for both my business and my personal brand as I feel it's important to make that distinction. I am more than my business, I am more than what I do every day while it is very important to me. I think it's equally important for people to get to know me as a person and all the other things that I'm involved in.

I wanted to have a dedicated space that serves as a living resume, but is also searchable and lets people know how we can collaborate together and how we can work together in a full sense.

In addition to running Ang H. Studio full time, I am also the host and producer for the Honey and Hustle podcast, that I created in March of 2020. I also do some speaking engagements as well. And those are not necessarily things that I would want to leave on my business website because as a business, I simply do digital media production.

So it's really important for me to have two websites that really were functional, beautiful, and searchable, and set the purpose of being able to let people know who I am and what I do in a very concise way.

— I created both websites myself. On Tilda, they have a lot of great templates you can start with and they also have something called Zero Block, which is where you can customize parts of a web page to make them exactly how you want. And that was the perfect amount of flexibility for me as someone who is not a web developer or web designer, but who really wanted to have the flexibility to design and create something that was unique to me.

— I guess you could say I'm kind of old school as I started with pen and paper. And when I went on Tilda, I saw some templates that were close enough to what I was looking for, that I could manipulate. And again, with the Zero Block structure, I could manipulate them to look like whatever I wanted and to add or take away whatever information I wanted. So that really allowed me to have the true flexibility of no code, but also truly custom built into one.

— Sure, if you look at my personal website cover, you simply see my photo as the background for the entire page, but there's a lot of great information on that page as well. Like some of the organizations that I've worked with, some of the nonprofits that I work with as well as a board member, and some of the other projects that you can find me on: the Ang H. Studio, my podcast, and other things like that.

Having one space where I could have just one page, one picture, not trying to put up a whole gallery of photos of me—I don't think I need that many for a personal website—and also just combining that with text and visual elements that really add that extra pop and bring it to life was really special and really fun to make.

— When I moved my website to Tilda, I think I immediately saw a response and how people were gaining an impression of me based on the website. I think having my websites on Tilda really took my brand and its recognition to another level.

It's really beautiful to see Those initial reactions change from like, “Oh, I saw your website” to “Wow, I saw your website!” That's always a great feeling and I really love having my websites on Tilda.

Also, responsiveness is great as it was really important to me to create a seamless experience that is compatible across platforms and viewable across platforms.

— Whether you are creating your first website or your fifth iteration of a website, I really feel like Tilda is such a great platform to do it on. Social media is great but social media is not forever. And if you really want a place where everybody can find you online, having a website is that place.

I'm using the Business Plan on Tilda, which allows me to have up to five websites. And for me, that was also a really big selling point when I moved my website to Tilda because I really wanted a website hosting platform that I could grow with and evolve over time. So right now I'm hosting Ang H. studio, the business website, and my personal brand there.

At some point, I would love to add my podcast hosting website to that platform as well. And I think that's really feasible with the way that Tilda is structured. Just really being able to have one home for all of your websites is a really beautiful thing.