How long should your podcast episodes be

How long should my episodes be?

This is a question I get asked a lot and theoretically, like a piece of string, you can have them as long as you flippin like.

In saying that, there are a number of things to think about before getting stuck into recording.

In this episode, I discuss a few of the factors to consider when thinking about the length of your podcast episodes. I talk about solo episodes, interviewing guests and share some examples of why keeping episodes on the shorter side will get a better success rate of people listening all the way to the end. And that’s what you want.

At the end of the day, it’s your podcast so you get to decide how long it is.

The biggest hurdle to overcome is delivering quality content to keep the listeners engaged. And then, have fun!

Transcript:

Welcome to Pump Up Your Pod
Hi, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Pump Up Your Pod with me, Brianna. So today's question that I get all the time that I wanted to answer for you to finish quickly is how long should my podcast episodes be? The short answer to this, the spoiler is as long as you flippin like, but I do want to give you some examples, and some reasons why you might want to think about the length of your episode before you get into it. So first of all, what is the topic of your podcast? And will you be interviewing people? Or will they be solo episodes? Or will they be a mix of both? If you're doing solo episodes, I will try and keep them under 20 minutes.
And I'm going to give you an example of that we have a client, and her name is Erica from the queen of confidence. She has a podcast called The Confidence Chronicles. So when she delivers her solo episodes, they're like 20 minutes, max, because she just has a topic that she talks about, she just wants to hit you with something and then get the hell out of there. And that connects really well with her audience. Because it's one topic, it's one thing, it's like a little bit of inspiration on a simple thing that she does delivers and gets out of there. Under 20 minutes, and her podcast gets over God, I can't even a lot, a lot, a lot of downloads, and the her solo ones are the ones that grow the best. So that's a little thing to remember there. So if you've got inspiration you want to give and it's a solo, keep it around that 20 minutes, max, mark.
Now another example I wanted to give you was another one of our clients, Tracy, who has a podcast called rise up in business, and she is a very busy business lawyer. She wanted to deliver a podcast where she was just delivering, you know, really punchy information about business legal issues, but like really dumb them down so that people that have no idea can understand it. And when we had our first chat, I advised her that it was a good idea to keep them short. It's just one topic, bam, get in deliver the info get out. The other good thing about this is that it's not such a time suck for you. Because you don't have to like edit and sit through a whole bunch of recording time a whole bunch of research on a bunch of topics or whatever, you're just doing the one thing, so it shouldn't be as much of a time investment.
A previous episode, how long does it take to run a podcast every week tells you the same thing that the shorter the podcast, the less impact it is on your life. So that's that for solo, tick. Now, if you're doing interviews, you're probably going to run them at a longer stretch, because you want to ask multiple questions, and you want to really get in deep on something and that sort of thing. With those type of episodes, I would say still keep it under 40 minutes, because unless the guest is like a super fiery guest that you've always wanted to have on the show that people already know, then you can stretch it out to be quite long, and people wouldn't care because it's like, oh, man, I've always wanted to hear from this particular guest. Whereas if it's someone that might not be as well known, keep it shorter to 40 minutes. And you'll have a better success rate of people actually listening to the end. And getting to that end bit where they start talking about like, how you can get in touch with them, the offerings that they have that sort of stuff. Keep it please keep it under 40 minutes.
That's my recommendation for that. Unless it's something you know, really luscious that you want to be long. So that's that example. Now, something that I would say as well, there's plenty of reasons why you would have a long episode, one of them being if your podcast is on a particular topic. So if we go to like true crime, for example, then you'll probably see that you know, to get really juicy on something here, you've got to have it be a fairly long thing, right case 167, for example, from case file. And that's got a crapload of good ratings, obviously a very popular show. That episode is 140 minutes long. So it's like a movie almost in the length of time that you're listening to it. And it doesn't mean that someone's going to sit there and listen all at once, but they'll come back to it because you know, they're in love with the suspense or whatever it is.
So if you've got a particular genre that you're chasing, then you can see what else in that genre like what the kind of lengths of their episodes are that seemed to be acceptable that are popular shows, and then you can base what you think you'll do Hang on that as well.
So that's my only caveat to kind of having long episodes. People like Joe Rogan, that sort of thing as well, you know, we're gonna have super long episodes and people love it like, it doesn't matter the length of the episode.
In the end, it's more about are you delivering quality content, right. So if you're delivering quality content, that episode is great from start to finish, then it won't matter how long it is, people are going to sit there and listen to the whole thing because they really are intrigued by whatever it is that you're talking about. So content is the first thing the first hurdle The first thing you have to get right. But in saying that is definitely lots of examples of shorter episodes going better, depending on the topic that you're wanting to talk about. That is my quick answer to how long should my podcast episode be? If you have any questions, hit me up, go to www.bambymedia.com, go to the contact page, we can have a chat about it. And that is it for today. See you next time.