Podcasting is a medium to inform, educate, and entertain your masses. With the current situation of the pandemic and people conforming to self-isolation, podcasting has become a medium of interaction and a medium to get your voice heard. Some like to listen while some want to record their voice and take center stage in this platform.
As newcomers or once who has been podcasting have always wondered how often should one podcast and how long should they be for? These are valid questions, and people need to be aware of this to increase their listenership and not sound too boring or long for the audience. To make your podcast just perfect, we are here to help you.
Table of Contents
How frequently should you podcast?
Well, this would depend on your frequency and content. If you have weekly podcasts, then you most definitely would have to release your podcast every week. The best way to do this is to be organized, even if it is weekly, set a date and time to put your podcast up, never delay this process. There are daily, weekly, semiweekly, biweekly, and monthly timelines followed. This categorization would most definitely depend on you and your content.
Understand how appropriate your content would be and organize a schedule accordingly. The most popular format seems to be a weekly format. Once this is set, you can choose the length of your podcast.
How long should each podcast episode be?
Podcast episodes vary from a couple of minutes to a few hours. But, what is the ideal length of the podcast episode meant to be? It depends on your topic, format that you want to follow, and so on so forth. But, let us figure out – how long should YOUR episodes be?
1. Content
The main idea is that if you have content for 20 minutes and deliver your primary purpose and what you want to say, then do not stretch it. If you think the 20-minute content will serve the audience, then it’s a perfect length for the episode. The question is, why would you want to stretch that for an hour? This is creating roadblocks for no apparent reason.
Create your content, and work on it for as long as you won’t make a great show. But, once done, do be mindful of not dragging it out longer than necessary. There is a rough format of time for podcast depending on the type of podcast –
| Semidaily | 1-5 minute |
| Daily | 1-5 minutes (30 sometimes) |
| Weekly | 16-60 minutes (exceptions) |
| Biweekly | 60 minutes |
| Monthly | 60-90 minutes |
| Annually | this isn’t podcasting |
2. Listening Habits
People try to understand the perfect time in terms of people’s understanding and the distraction period of the mind. This means the time that the brain concentrates on the content until it starts to fade it away.
There is no particular time or space for people to listen to podcasts. It’s subjective. If you are in a mood for a podcast, then go ahead and serve yourself one. But, people’s attention to the podcast also depends on your content, and the length is just a mere secondary basis.
Some individuals finish an entire episode in sitting while others pauce it within five minutes and decide to continue it later. But, at the end of the day, if your content is engaging and you do not drag it out for no apparent reason, its an entire episode.
3. All episodes to be the same length?
Again it cannot be stressed enough – do not stretch something out if it’s done or cut short if not. Of course, there is an advantage to have a certain amount of consistency with the length of the podcast. Listeners most definitely prefer the episodes to have sure flexibility with the time, especially a loyal audience.
You most definitely get into the position by having a process, system, and routine I place for putting episodes together. They are all similar lengths, as that’s how long it takes to present the content.
You can deviate from content now, and then it all depends on the information. Having no consistency at all in your length could be jarring to your audience, and prevent you from growing your listener base.
Giving an impression of disorganization, poor planning, and opposite of what listeners are looking for.
4. Daily show and Flash briefings
One reason to create small say 10-minute episodes is to have daily news or flash briefing shows. These are becoming immensely popular on smart speakers, allowing listeners to build their playlists of shows that update them on the interest area of their choice daily. These, by nature, are short and crisp. The content is what should ideally dictate the creation of such a show. The episode’s runtime is quick but doesn’t necessarily mean they take less time and work to create. Especially the case of new episodes put out there daily.
5. Overly long Episodes – Yay or Nay
The content of the show dictates if the length is ideal or not. Say, for example, a show with episodes ranging from 4 to 6 hours long sounds hectic for listeners. But, if the content is ideal and requires that much time then it’s not “too long,” it’s termed perfect.
But, if a podcast runs over one and a half or two hours, there needs to be a good enough reason for the same. You having multi-hour-long episodes on your back catalog could put new audiences off when they come to check your show out, as it seems like a massive commitment of time. Then again, you should never feel compelled to shorten good content for this reason. You could also consider splitting the episodes into parts one and two.
Final Thoughts
There is no single answer, as it all depends on you and what you want to get out of your podcast. In the end, have fresh content; don’t try to stretch it out for the sake of time and engage your audience. Go ahead and start recording your podcasts.
