Every time I was asked a question about the length of an optimum podcast, I knew immediately that the one who asked this is a perfectionist. Or they were finding a reason after another to procrastinate rather than start producing their podcast.

A topic such as the length of a podcast, in my opinion, will result in endless — or if I can be bold, I will say useless — debate.

This is not to say that knowing the right length for a podcast is not important. Quite the opposite though, I think optimal length could result in more consumption and higher response rate.

What did they say about podcast length?

Image credit: Mark_W.

For the past few years, many podcast experts and podcasters have chimed in with their own opinions about this. Some have done research with their audience and concluded that the right podcast length is 20 minutes.

Other experts argued that to be anywhere useful, the magic number has to be around 40-45 minutes.

I bet you have heard other podcasters swear by a shorter podcast — perhaps 5-10 minutes per episode.

Each of them have different theories about why that specific length works best.

Which one is true?

In my humble opinion, all and none of them are. The length of a podcast depends on many factors and no podcast is the same. They claim that a specific duration works for them because it just works. But it isn’t necessarily for every podcast.

What makes an optimum length

There are a number of ways of looking at it:

• Listeners or viewers attention span. In this case, podcasters have an advantage over web publishers. Several researches have shown that people have very short attention span when it comes to browsing on the Web. People tend to scan quickly over the content to see if anything grabs their attention.

  Scientific tests have shown similar results. You can verify this by looking at the bounce rate metrics of your web site in the stats. Although bounce rate doesn’t always mean attention span, at least it shows you how quickly people make a decision after arriving at a site. Also pay attention to the time average visitor visits your site.

  Back to the topic, podcast consumers can’t just skim from the first to the end of a podcast in a few seconds but this doesn’t mean podcasters can get away with low quality content. Nowadays consumers have more choices so quality is not an option anymore. The attention span of people who are listening to a podcast, especially on a portable media player, is going to be longer.

  The greater the attention span, the longer a podcast can be.

• The publishing schedule. The theory goes like this. Podcasts that are published daily should be shorter than those that have longer publishing schedule. If it is a weekly podcast, the consumer has a full week to find the time to listen to the podcast. For daily podcast, most consumers have to listen on that day because the content is timely and it was designed as such. There are exceptions to this though and you should adjust it as necessary.
• Topic or genre of the podcast. The topic of the podcast episode often determines its length. For example if this week a podcast features an expert, it may be a 45-minute to one-hour interview. During an event or seminar, the content may come shorter but more frequently.
• Segments of the podcast. The original podcast may have a pre-determine set of segments of which each of them only a few minutes long. But as the podcast goes, at certain week of the month, the podcasters may get more questions than other weeks. The podcaster may decide to answer the question in the Q&A segment over several weeks in different episodes or they may just extend the length of that one episode segment. As a podcaster, you are the one who decide which route to take, whether you want to stick with the time or you want to respond to your listeners as fast as you can.
• Entertainment value. Needless to say, podcasts that have high entertainment value should be longer because people seem to never get enough of them. Although podcasters should also take other factors into account, like the time average consumers spend on a podcast, generally if the podcast is interesting, people are going to spend more time on it. On the other hand, people can’t stand boring podcast and will stop listening before the podcast ends, even if they still have time.

It’s about the audience

Image credit: kirtaph.

At the end of the day, what’s matter is the audience. You can’t possibly come up with an optimum podcast length without testing it.

The length should be different from one podcast to another, because the audience has different preferences and available time to enjoy the podcast. Even in the same podcast, you can’t get the whole audience who agree on one duration of the podcast.

When I listened to some podcasts, I always skip several minutes into the content right into certain segment, but I can’t say that the other segments that I skip is not interesting because if they don’t, they should not be there.

While in a blog you can vary the one post to another, podcast is more limited. In blogs, you can post five times a day, of which two of them are quite comprehensive but the others are just two or three paragraphs. But in a podcast, you should be more predictable. You can’t publish as often so more thorough planning it necessary.

After podcasting for some time, you should get feedback from the listeners. You can take feedback and adjust the length of the podcast accordingly.

For now, start with the length that is comfortable for you. The market will tell you if they don’t like it. It is the only way you’ll know.

Also read: Podcast Tutorial.

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