Malaika Carpenter

Malaika Carpenter is a solo content strategist in Philadelphia. Working on her own with non-content-focused clients has shown her the importance of having a clearly articulated, replicable content-strategy process.

Malaika and I talked about:

her work at SayCred Media Group helping clients get clear on their "why"

her background as a pharmaceutical sales representative and how it helps her content strategy practice

how she knew from an early age that she would someday be a storyteller

how her work on the college paper as a business student helped her link story and business intent, "how to connect the writing that I'm doing to a business goal"

how her background as a sales rep helps her research customers' needs

her transition from corporate communications to content strategy consultant

how she manages the scope and workload of a solo content strategy practice

her brilliant content-strategy-process-as-meal-planning analogy

how having a structure around her process helps her replicate content successes

how "building blocks" create a replicable process, even for organizations with disparate content needs

how her avocation as an improv player helps her content strategy work

applying the improv concept of "playing to the top of your intelligence" to content strategy work

helping clients set realistic content expectations

what an exciting time it is to be a content strategist

the importance of being genuinely, authentically human in your content strategy work

checking our biases and being as inclusive as possible in our content work

Malaika's Bio

Malaika Carpenter is the founder and principal consultant of SayCred Media Group, whose purpose is to help companies articulate their value through concise and compelling content that delivers results.

Drawing from her experience in field sales and corporate communications, she understands what it takes to create message strategies that deliver results. She has experience applying these strategies within organizations of all sizes, including large corporations and small startups in healthcare and technology.

Her most recent work has been establishing communication strategies and content production processes for Philadelphia-based health tech startup Life.io. She’s been integral in creating their user onboarding communications strategy, web and mobile platform content, and promotional product materials. View her work by visiting her website and online portfolio .

Video

Here's the video version of our conversation:

https://youtu.be/plSKMEd4uJA

Transcript

Larry:

Hey everyone. Welcome to episode number 29 of the Content Strategy Interviews Podcast. I'm really happy today to have with us Malaika Carpenter. She's an independent content strategist in Philadelphia. I'll let Malaika tell you a little bit more about her background. Welcome.

Malaika:

Thank you Larry. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to talk to you today.

Malaika:

Yes, I am founder and principal consultant of SayCred Media Group. Pretty much we are a content strategy consultancy that helps companies articulate their value through concise and compelling content that delivers results. Essentially what I do is help companies build and share their brand story. I help them getting them clear on their "why".

Malaika:

The "why" to me is what your brand vision is and your value proposition is and then taking that and crafting strategies for creating different types of content that ultimately pulls their audience in and then keeps them coming back for more. That's what I do.

Larry:

That's a great concise description of a practice.