12: How Long Should Your Podcast Episodes Be?
In this episode of Podcasting for Coaches, I break down the main things you need to consider when deciding long your podcast episodes should be.
Sure, there's all kinds of fancy surveys and data out there about what the "top" podcasts are doing, but does that mean you should follow their lead? Take a listen below to find out!
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Transcript
Welcome to podcasting for coaches. I'm Britany Felix and I'm a podcast launch consultant who specializes in helping coaches and consultants utilize the power of podcasting as a way to build brand awareness and generate new leads for their business. I realize not every new coach or consultant can afford to hire someone to help launch their show. So I created this podcast as a way to guide you through the process of launching and utilizing your very own podcast to help you grow your business and reach a new audience of adoring followers and potential clients. If you're ready to get your voice and podcast out into the world, head over to podcasting for coaches.com to learn more. Welcome to episode number 12 of podcasting for coaches. In this episode, I am obviously going to cover just how long your episodes should be. So the interesting thing about this is that there is data out there, there are tons and tons of different articles that you can read. Some of them have a consensus, and some of them are wildly different from all the rest. But the truth of the matter is, it just really doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what the latest fancy survey says about, you know, the average length of the top 100 podcasts in iTunes. Because you know what, of those 100. How many are your specific listeners going to also be listening to how many of those top 100 podcasts are entertainment podcast by celebrities, or new shows by NPR, or shows about sports or learning a foreign language or any of these things that have absolutely nothing to do with your business, and what your ideal client gives a crap about. So what I want you to do when you're coming up with a plan for your podcast, and working out all of these details here in the beginning, so that you can really start off with a bang and have a good process, right from the get go is to think about your ideal client, who is also your avatar, your target audience is your ideal client, somebody who is working in corporate and they're likely to listen to podcasts on their morning commute, or is your ideal client, a busy mother who is juggling children at home, and managing a household and maybe also a business at the same time. And so her time is extremely valuable is your ideal client, somebody who is so passionate about your topic, that they just cannot stop themselves from consuming every single bit of content they can possibly get their hands on, all of those things are going to make a difference in how long they're going to want to listen to your episodes. Someone who's still working in corporate, maybe they have a 45 minute commute one way and so they can deal with a longer episode. The busy mom needs to just cram information in when she has a few spare minutes, the person who is just dying for your information and your content, and they just cannot stop consuming it will be fine if your episode is an hour and a half long, because they will want it to still be longer. So I highly encourage you to really, really, really get to know your ideal client. And if you haven't done so already with your business, this is going to affect how you do absolutely everything. Every decision in your business should be made with the ideal client in mind. So besides thinking about what that ideal client is going to want, I also want you to think about what's going to fit in with your lifestyle and your budget. Do you have time to record hour long interviews a couple of times a week, especially in the beginning as you're building up your stockpile of content. If you don't, then maybe don't start off doing an hour long show. And even just beyond the recording, you have the planning process for it, you know, outlining what you're going to talk about, and doing the prep work for the interviews researching the guests so that you can have enough questions during the conversation. And then beyond that, you still have to edit it or pay someone else to edit it. And let me tell you a 10 minute episode is going to take way less time than an hour long episode. It's also going to cost a lot less probably to get edited if you're going to outsource that from the beginning. So think about all these things as you are trying to decide on the ideal length of your episodes. If you are somebody who's pretty busy to begin with, and you're just not really sure if you have a time to devote to hour long episodes, start off with 30 and see how that feels. The great thing about a podcast is you can tweak this as you go along. You are not set in stone. If you start with a 30 minute show and you find Hey, I really kind of enjoy these conversations that I'm having. I want to experience a lot more of that my listeners are listening all the way through to the end. Let me see if I can increase these a little bit and capture my audience's attention for a little bit longer. Or vice versa. If you're doing 30 minute episodes, and you're just struggling to produce content for that long, especially if you're doing solo episodes, then scale it back to 20 minutes 15 minutes 10 work with these numbers and see what works best for your audience. And then I highly recommend after that after you have put out your show For a little while, and you have a good audience that's listening and they're engaged, get their feedback, literally just ask them. If you have a Facebook community, set up a poll, set up a poll on Twitter, have people go to your website and take a vote or submit answers to you, you know, via email or direct messages or through speakpipe. But you know, where they can leave you actual voice messages on your site, and find out what's working for them. So to recap, when thinking about the length of your episodes, make sure you have your ideal client in mind. Make sure that you have your own lifestyle and the time that you have available in mind. And make sure that you have your budget in mind as well. There is no one size fits all. And podcasting, which is one of my favorite things about it. I am somebody who does not like to be shoved into a little bit of box and told exactly what I need to do. And I don't want to say the same thing to you either. There are of course, some things absolutely must be done in the process, especially with the tech side of things. But when it comes to the format of your show, that's entirely up to you. Let it be whatever you want. Let your creativity roll, and then let your target audience tell you how they feel about it. Thank you so much for listening today. And I hope that you tune in next week where we are going to talk about the ideal day of the week for you to release your episodes. Have a fantastic week. And that wraps up another episode of podcasting for coaches. If you're wondering if now is the right time to start a podcast for your coaching or consulting business. Head on over to podcasting for coaches comm where you can either take a free quiz or schedule a one on one consultation with yours truly, thank you so much for joining me today and I will see you back here for the next episode.