How Long Should Podcast Episodes Be?

Length matters.

Episode Length Matters More Than You Think

One of the first questions that comes up when you are starting to plan your podcast is how long should your podcast episodes be? And the answer to that is really similar to the answer to the question how long is a piece of rope? A podcast episode needs to be as long as it needs to be to do the job that it has to do.

And that is going to vary a lot from business to business, from podcast to podcast, and even for the different episodes that you’re producing over your kind of production career. Deciding how long it should be really comes down to what are you trying to convey with the episode? What is the really important information that you want to make sure anybody listening is able to get?

The episode needs to be long enough to do that, and hopefully not too much longer and contain a bunch of kind of fluff or tangents or stuff that doesn’t really help you get to the point. Newer podcasters often benefit from tightening their schedule down a little bit and giving themselves less time. So if they’re recording with a guest or they’re planning a solo episode when you know you have 45 minutes to fill, it can feel like you’ve got all the time in the world to explore all these different tangents and ideas, but that can often mean you’re going to be paying for it, either in production to tighten up the episode or releasing episodes that have as much fluff as they have good content.

So give yourself a shorter time frame as you’re getting going. 30 minutes can be pretty good. We’ve seen that be really effective as someone is getting into the habit of interviewing. Now, of course, solo episodes are going to be typically shorter. Most of us can’t just kind of turn on the camera and talk for an hour, without any support or guidance or any breaks.

So the episodes tend to be in the shorter range in the 2, 5, 10, 15, maybe 20 minutes as you get into things. When we look at the top performing podcasts in the State of Business Podcasting report, we see there’s been a really consistent result over the years that we’ve been doing this and podcast episodes tend to be about 45, 44, 46 minutes long.

And that, of course, includes the really short daily episodes that are 2 or 3 minutes. And it also includes the long, 2 hour Mayor of Thorns with four guys sitting around a conference table. And the best bet for you is going to be somewhere in between those, probably, unless you’re doing a micro podcast, which is going to be naturally short.

So experiment with different styles as you’re getting going. Maybe you’ll release them, maybe you won’t. But try talking for different amounts of time by yourself or with others to see what ends up working for you. And if you’re ever in doubt, aim on the side of shorter.

Watch: How Long Should a Podcast Episode Actually Be?

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