The Best Length for Your Podcast Episodes
One of the most common questions I’m asked is…
“How long should my episode be?”
And as much as you want me to answer with a specific time amount, the truth is there is no gold standard for how long the length should be. I understand, you may be scratching your head and thinking, “Darlene, that’s no answer. What should I really do?”
I do have some thoughts and considerations to share. Use these insights to guide you towards choosing what’s right for your show.
Monologue Episodes
If you’re recording an episode where you’re the only person speaking these are known as monologues or solo episodes. These episodes generally range from 5-30 minutes.
The key to making monologues work for listeners is to talk to a specific topic and stay on topic. Take as much time as is needed to cover your topic. Keep it concise. Make all of your points.
You may be able to cover everything in 8 minutes or you could need 27 minutes. The time needed will vary by the topic. Don’t feel you need to stretch the episode out to meet a pre-determined length of time. Just tackle the topic. When you’re done, you are done.
Interview Episodes
While talking long enough to cover a topic as a solo episode works, there are different considerations when interviewing guests. How should you handle a guest who is long-winded with their answers or the guest who gives brief—sometimes single word—responses? No worries, I have some tips:
Determine how long you would like allotted for interviewing a guest. For purposes of this example, let’s say you decided to conduct interviews up to 45 minutes.
Inform the guest up front that this will be a 45-minute interview and explain you’ll cover as much as time permits.
Always create some extra questions in case you get short answers and have cruised through the 5-7 questions you prepared in 18 minutes but had planned for a 45-minute interview.
Alternately, this is your show so if you feel like the interview covered the topic well in 18 minutes, then conclude the interview. It’s fine to have a shorter episode. You could always add some solo commentary after the interview during editing production, if you feel the episode needs it.
And, if you’re deep in conversation at the 45-minute mark, don’t hesitate to keep the conversation going a bit longer. Your listeners will appreciate the content and will stick with you.
Bottom line: Don’t feel constrained by whatever time markers you make for yourself. Take as much time as is needed to cover your topic.
One More Consideration
An important piece to consider is related to the editing. Editing is affected whether you are a DIY editor or working with a podcast producer to edit your episodes.
If you are editing this yourself and know you only have X amount of time to dedicate to editing then you should keep your episode in a certain time range.
In my experience, if the raw audio is 30 minutes long, it typically takes an hour to edit. My formula is: double the audio time to determine the needed editing time.
✨There’s also magic in editing.✨ Remember that long-winded guest with repetitive answers? These responses can be trimmed and tightened up in editing—apply this to both the audio and the accompanying transcript.
TIP: Use the episode transcript to help you determine where to make audio edits. You can spot redundant sections of the conversation quickly by using word searches.