Podcasting can be an enjoyable pastime or a full-time business depending on what you put into it.
And If you want to engage your podcast audience you need to be ahead of the game. One way is to keep the length of the episodes appropriate to your audience and content.
This is debatable when designing your podcast on what works best for each business.
For example, podcasts sharing a similar subject may vary in length. There are various podcasts that are short and sweet, delivering a message fast and others that are longer and more in-depth intended to make you think.
Wondering how long your podcast should be?
One of the first things to decide how often you are planning to publish a podcast. If you are looking at recording and releasing more than one podcasts a day, the podcasts will be shorter than a monthly recorded podcast for two reasons:
Timeline
Recording, editing, and publishing are time-consuming and the longer you are recording, the more time it takes. This could become impractical when you have other jobs, tasks, etc. in your daily life.
Audience’s Time
Keep in mind too if your podcasts are too lengthy, the audience may not be able to tune into your content in one sitting. This could mean you will lose their interest and they may not tune again and listen to the podcast.
So, if you want to produce daily content, it's probably best to keep your podcasts on the shorter side. Think between 10 and 15 minutes, but if you want to do a weekly schedule shoot for a maximum of 60 minutes and monthly podcasts around 90 minutes. These are just suggestions but try to use these numbers as a guide so audiences will remain with you.
Good Topic
Additionally, the attention span of audiences can be short, and even recently it has been reported our attention span has decreased.
Getting your audience to listen to your podcast for 10-15 minutes might be a good achievement and increasing it to 60 minutes could push your audience. Meaning, by the episode ends, the audience may have already lost interest and left.
If either of these things happens, the audience most likely will not come back.
The topic of the podcast should also help you determine the length of your podcast. For instance, talking about current events might require only a few minutes but ‘how to make a podcast’ might need 30-45 minutes or more. It all depends on what can be said on the topic without boring the audience.
The Format
To help improve the concentration of your audience and to keep their attention, be sure to utilize an entertaining format. The better your format, the longer the podcast can be. There are certain ways successful podcasters keep their audience’s attention:
- Add music
- Interview interesting guests
- Add advertisements
- Experiment with different rhythms
By adding variety to your format, you may increase the length of your podcasts but they will need to make sense. There is no point in interviewing someone when they have nothing to do with the topic.
Length of Podcast
The length of your podcast could very well either make or break your podcasting success. Deciding on the length depends on various factors combined with good content and format — both will gauge what your audience wants. Consider these points when recording your podcast to make sure it has every chance of being successful.
