What is the Perfect Length for Your Podcast Episodes?

As you begin your podcast launch process, you should ask yourself how long you want your episodes to run.

You might see podcasts that run an hour-long or only five to ten minutes, but each podcast is different, even those in the same niche or industry. So how do you determine what length is right for you and your podcast?

The length of your podcast depends on certain factors, and it’s not one-size-fits-all podcasts. It might even take some trial and error and testing to determine the correct length for you and your audience.

Here are the factors to consider when determining your podcast episode length:

Factors to Consider:

Your content determines the podcast episode length

We improve by learning from our mistakes, and my first mistake in podcasting was to name my podcast with a specific time limit: 10.

With my first podcast, History in 10, I endeavored to give a history lesson in 10 minutes. It seemed easy at first, given the details of the people, places, and events I researched. Yet, no matter how much I researched a topic or additional details I included, I hardly ever hit that 10-minute mark.

I spoke slower, provided extra details and fluff, and started elongating intros and outros, yet it was still a struggle to come up with a 10-minute episode each week.

At the beginning of my podcasting journey, I didn’t understand that episode lengths could vary based on the content and the value provided to the audience. Sure, I could give a history lesson in 10 minutes and all kinds of crazy details and fluff, or I could get to the point in five minutes or less.

The most crucial factor in determining an appropriate length for your podcast episode is the value you provide to your audience through your content. As long as you get to the point, stay on topic, keep your audience interested, and provide value, the episode length doesn’t matter. You could talk for five minutes, thirty minutes, or two hours — just make sure you provide great content that matters.

Your audience’s listening habits support the episode length

When I launched my first interview-style podcast in 2018, I asked my audience for feedback. As a newbie podcaster, I wanted to know what they wanted to hear and how I could make it the best podcast around.

My intention for gathering feedback was to understand the content my audience wanted to hear. Yet, one response (from a former guest nonetheless) stuck out in my mind: my episodes were too long for her to listen to on her short commute to work.

At first, I was a little shocked. These were guest interviews where we talked about building a career in the music industry. How could I even begin to shorten these episodes without compromising the guest’s message and advice? It wasn’t like I was sitting there talking to myself for an hour about a topic. Couldn’t they pause the episode and come back to it later?

As I listened to more podcasts myself, I understood my audience’s frustration with extended episodes. When I hit pause on an episode and come back to it hours, if not days later, I had to rack my brain to remember the topic or the conversation. Listening to an episode in one sitting felt easier and shorter episodes gave me time to listen to other episodes or podcasts.

In an era of information overwhelm, audiences can quickly move on to something else if they feel like your content is dragging on or if it’s hard to consume. Audiences might not finish an episode that takes more than one or two sittings because it becomes too hard for them to continue.

The key is to understand your audience’s listening habits

• How do they consume your content?
• Where are they listening?
• When do they listen?

This might take some experimenting and a review of your podcast analytics over time to see where people typically drop off in your episodes. An excellent way to find out is to just ask your audience — in an episode, on social media, or through your email list.

How much time do you have?

Podcasting is time-consuming. You likely spend hours researching, connecting with guests, recording, producing, and marketing each episode. How much time you have in your day or week can significantly impact the length of each podcast episode.

Though the history podcast was only ten minutes, I typically spent at least a day on the weekend producing it. When I couldn’t hit the ten-minute mark, it typically took longer as I researched further or attempted to add fluff to the episodes.

Editing and preparing the marketing for my interview-style podcast typically took at least two to three hours out of my week, especially when episodes hit an hour or more. And that didn’t even include the time I spent conversing with the guest during the recording process.

You might have grand plans of releasing an hour-long episode a week. And that’s great if you have the time to do so or a podcast management team who can support you and take on the time-consuming tasks of editing, preparing show notes, and marketing the episodes.

Consistent podcasts are successful podcasts, so carefully consider how much time you have to devote to your podcast each week to avoid burnout and degradation in the quality of your episodes.

If you think you only have time for a 10-minute podcast, then 10 minutes is the perfect length. If you have time for an hour-long podcast and you know you can provide value in that hour, then an hour is the ideal length.

What’s the Right Length?

We had a saying in my graduate program that stuck with me to this day: “It depends.”

In business and content marketing, there’s no right or wrong answer. It just depends.

The right podcast episode length depends on your content, your audience, and the amount of time you have to devote to your podcast. It depends on your topic and how much you can talk about it. Conversations with your guests will play a factor as they might be able to speak for hours on a particular topic or make it short and sweet in twenty minutes.

Can the Length Vary Per Episode?

Episodes don’t have to be the same length every time, though it is beneficial to keep them around the same length for your audience. They begin to expect a certain length, so if episodes vary widely, they can be off-putting for listeners.

Keep in mind that you can have variety between solo and guest episodes. While most of my guest episodes hit 45 minutes to an hour due to the nature of interviews, my solo episodes are typically 15 to 20 minutes. Though these times vary widely, there is still a sense of consistency, and my audience recognizes a solo episode will be far shorter than an interview episode.

There is no right or wrong answer for episode length. Every podcast out there varies depending on several factors. Knowing your content, your audience, and the amount of time you have in your schedule are vital to determining the right podcast episode length for you.