What Is The Ideal Length For A Podcast? The Podcast Report Episode #12

What is the ideal length for a podcast? It's the podcast report episode 12@thepodcastreport.com 12 show hotline is 503-897-1290. It's the podcast Report with Paul Colligan. And here's Paul. I'll be blunt, asking if there's an ideal length for a podcast is kind of like asking if there's an ideal length for a piece of string. There are a few more variables here that we have to deal with, but if this idea and concept resonates with you, go ahead and visit the podcastreport.com 12. We'll give you a chance to tweet it and talk about it. What is the Podcast Report? My name is Paul Colligan. I'm author of the Business Podcasting Bible, the number one top selling podcast strategies. I've been in podcasting for almost a decade, since the very beginning of this. Loved the industry, loved it since day one. Two audiences for this show. Number one, the podcaster. Number two, those things about getting into the podcasting game now. Yes, there are a lot of podcasts about podcasts, but if you listen to previous episodes, I've got a plan and a purpose for this one. It's not a massive play, but it's a deep one. You are welcome. Slowly, slowly, a much needed conversation is going to start happening here. I hope you become part of it. So why this topic? Why are we chatting about the ideal podcast length? Well, one of the things that's funny about podcasting, you see this over and over and over again all throughout the boards, all throughout the websites. People always want to know what's the ideal length, what microphone should I use, what software should I use, all these typical topics. They ask this question over and over again, but they very seldom think through the implications of what it is that they're asking, which is part of what I'm trying to do here on the show. I mean, I appreciate why they ask how long should my podcast be? What do I do with this? And sometimes I'll be honest, I've been frustrated because usually if I give them the real answer, the answer I'm going to give them on this episode, they get frustrated and sometimes I give them the answer they want to hear. But we're not going to do that in this episode. We're going to take a look at this. This is the wrong question. And why is it the wrong question? Well, the first thing is there's this really funny trend and tendency inside of new media. The better we get the cooler we get, the more opportunity we see. We find ourselves more and more trying to make it like old media. You know, we sell ads at the prices of old media. We do insertions at the timing and the schedule of old media. And part of it comes from, I think, sadly, a desire to legitimize ourselves. No, we're just like the big guys. We can do commercials just like the big guys, we can charge just like the big guys. But the fact of the matter is, we are more legitimate than old media. The opportunities of podcasting are bigger than old media. It's hard to blaze a trail when you're trying to look like everyone else. I'll be blunt. I mean, the theme that I wrote around this was basically, if you're thinking about the length of your show first, you're not thinking about your audience. And the ability to communicate and deal with your audience is the very thing, is the very power, is the very strength that podcasting gives you, that this new media space that the show production space gives you. Almost a decade later, as I said, people are still asking over and over again, but hopefully we will learn at some point. Let's talk about a couple things. The first thing I want to chat about, I want to examine is simply the question, even if we pick a length, is that the length of time that we should be every episode? There's a concept of the pattern interrupt, and we have tremendous strength as podcasters, as media producers of the pattern interrupt. I mean, if my show is always three minutes, you know exactly what to expect. Even on this show, you know, we generally stay around the 20 minute length, some longer, some less, but generally around that length. But suddenly I were to do a three minute episode. Wow, what just happened? Did I miss something big? If I were to do an hour long episode. Wait a minute, Paul here, he's taking this topic seriously. This one's different than all the rest. If your audience doesn't know what's going to happen to next, what's going to happen next, then their mind is not going to switch away, they're going to stay with you because they're nervous about what happens next. And that pattern interrupt is one of the things that you can really, truly make great use of in your show production. You know, sometimes I very seldom do it now, but the evening news, you know, sometimes there are evenings when there's two, three hours of news and they got to squish into 30 minutes. And sometimes more often than not, there are evenings where there's five minutes of news and they tend to stretch it out to 30, just to make it work. It's just a bad idea. Pattern interrupt. So the ideal length question versus strategies of podcast creation. I understand why we ask. And if there are tendencies, if there are trends, if there are things that are happening in the space that we need to pay attention to, that's definitely worth asking. There are some strategies at play when you are making your podcast. One of my favorite audiences is the American commute. Couple stats from the Department of Transportation, actually, beginning of 2014, more than 97 million Americans. This is just North America or United States of America, not even Canada and Mexico. In this, more than 97 million people commute to work by themselves. They're in their car, they're not having a conversation. They're not dealing with anybody. They're either, you know, well, they're listening to something, be it the white noise of the freeway or radio or whatnot. This is the audience that I love. This is the audience that I really enjoy for podcasting now, 49% of them. So almost half, almost exactly half are more than 11 miles. So you're talking about, you know, average, a 20 minute, ish commute. Some go considerably longer. So what a lot of people say is, you know, well, if you make a show 20 minutes long, you got almost 100 million Americans who can consume that content. And that's not bad. And statistically speaking, I mean, think about it. If you have a 25 minute podcast and at the end of your 25 minute podcast is a call to action, and that call to action is in the last two minutes and somebody has a 20 minute commute, what's the chance that they're going to come back and listen to the rest of the show? That type of thing, Making things around the length of the American commute makes sense. There's a strategy there, but it's not necessarily the entire picture. There are expectations of other shows. There are people who are saying podcasts or shows of about 20 minutes in length. People are saying that and it's not true. But unfortunately, if that expectation is there, if my first consumption of you, I get the feeling that you're babbling and you're going on. That could take me to a bad place. Then, let's be honest, we have two really big old media plays at hand here. We have the 24 minute sitcom and we have the 24 minute news cycle. Of course, commercials are added to make that go to 30 minutes. But a lot of us are used to consuming content at the top and the bottom of the hour. You know, our biggest competition for the American commuter is, you know, news radio, drive time radio, still best ad buy in, in this town, at least. And so if they're expecting that and if that is considered normal to them, and if that is considered correct to them, that's something you definitely want to think about. So there are strategies at play here, but what do we do with this? How do you respond? How do you handle this? First thing, number one, understand your market first. So this over and over and over again, market message, then the media or the format or whatever you want to call it, but it always comes, it starts with the market. Some markets, some segments are certainly going to be more prone to one format or over another. You know, if you have a daily business tip that kind of mirrors and echoes the drive time radio, well, you want to mirror an echo. You want to sound like drive time radio. You know, if you've got a audience, you know, you make a certain promise, you want to deliver, deliver on that promise. Some segments certainly more prone to one format over the other. And if your audience is prone to that format, then play to that format and serve them. But then it becomes an issue of your market, it becomes an issue of your audience, not an issue of everybody else is doing it. That's incredible. That's incredibly important. What I'm asking you here is, do you have an avatar yet for your audience? Do you know who your podcast is for? Do you know what they are like? If I asked you how long does your audience like to listen to podcasts, can you tell me? Once you understand the market, you're going to be in a much better place for your podcast. Then once you get the market, you look at the message. Now one of the most important things about a message, one of the things we preach around here at the podcast report at least, is of course, you know, there's a call to action. The podcast is part of your business, the podcast is not necessarily your business. And a lot of calls to action. Boy, if I listen to an hour long podcast and there are three commercials, you know, I might not even if you put a gun to my head, be able to tell you who was on the first commercial. One of the things I really like is, you know, one call to action per podcast, and sometimes that lends itself to a shorter podcast format. Now if your podcast is there to expand who it is that you are and what it is that you're doing, and you are the call to action, and then maybe you're okay. And there are different formats that are there but, man, I don't want to buy the last ad spot and I certainly don't want to buy. I'm sorry, I don't want to buy the first ad spot and I certainly don't want to buy the last ad spot. If they're not going to listen all the way through, then of course, if I'm the middle, then my marketing message is confused by a bunch of stuff. You know, what is your message? Because, boy, you make that connection and your audience makes the purchase from it, you're just at a much better place. Once you get the market and then the message, then you look to the media. Of course, in this particular case, we're looking about podcasting. So let's speak to the format of the podcasting. What if your podcast is too long? Some options. What if there are multiple calls to action? Some options. Number one, chop it up. I mean, if you've got a show that's an hour long in length and you've got three AD segments, could you do three 20 minute shows? Would that make sense? Obviously, keeping it a certain length, if you promise it, if you call it, the podcast is called 10 Minutes with Frank. You certainly want to keep the show 10 minutes long. If you want to keep it to a certain length, that's fine. But that only comes again when you understand your market and your message. Now, in a future episode of the podcast report, this is inked. We just got to sign up the time. I've got Dean Jackson from the I Love Marketing podcast, which is seldom less than an hour and some people call that really frustrating. But after having breakfast with Dean, he kind of explained where it was going and it was fascinating and we have to do a whole episode about it. And he understands his format to be over an hour because he knows who his market is, he knows what his message is, he knows what the call to action is. In his case, a format is over an hour long. We're going to bring him on very, very soon. Market, message, media and or format. Now, if you've made a bad decision in the past, you know, some of you are going, oh, but Paul, you know, I read this book a while ago and it said podcasts have to be 20 minutes and I have 100 episodes at 20 minutes. Hey, consider a reboot. Consider season two. You know, consider. You really want to match your audience, right? Not make a certain podcasting guru happy. So consider a reboot. Now, one of the things that happened recently, and hopefully we'll get Mike on the show as well. Michael Hyatt, he did 100 episodes of his podcast. A certain segment, a certain format. It was monologue. And then he realized, nope, I don't like this anymore. And he redid it and he changed a bunch of things. And that's okay because he understood his market after doing 100 shows, understood his message, and he changed his whole format accordingly. So if you're in a case where you've made a bad decision, consider a reboot. But also consider the power of a pattern interrupt. If you are the only one worried about how long your podcast is, and if you are, you know, maybe the podcasting gurus are the only ones worried about how long the podcasting is, get over it and just have, you know, a podcast of an extended length. I'll tell you right now when I do the interview with Dean Jackson about the over hour long podcast, I can imagine we're going to squeeze that whole thing into 15 minutes. So there we go, some thoughts on it. Now my smarty pants answer. You know, when I'm with the right audience, people ask me how long a podcast should be. And my smarty pants answer is always, well, as long as it needs to be and not one minute more. It's back to that news idea of, you know, when you got 10 minutes of news, give 10 minutes of news. When you got an hour's worth of news, give an hour's worth of news. But the freedom that gives you the lack of requirement to completely fill the time, don't worry about that. I mean, I think about this episode versus a couple episodes back when he interviewed Ed Rush about buying his audience. This is a much simpler concept. This is not going to be as long of an episode. That's not bad, really comes back to the market message match thing. Love your thoughts on this one. The Twitter account for this show was podcast rpt. Wasn't able to get podcast report. The limits of Twitter and all those things. How many letters we have. But podcast RPT on Twitter, we are@facebook.com the PodcastReport and we are of course@the PodcastReport.com 12. Now if you would like a transcript of this episode and the mind map that we utilize to put this episode together, go ahead and text EP12 Ep12 as in episode 12 to the show number 503-897-1290. Feel free to leave a voicemail message at that number as well. We're figuring out voicemail flow. Having a good time with it. No voicemail last week, but when it comes in, we often share it. You can get the podcast report and I strongly recommend that you subscribe to the podcast report so that you get updates when they come out. We are at itunes. We are at Stitcher. We are at Pocket Cast, tunein Overcast. We are at all the big places. We're not on SoundCloud yet. We'll be taking a look at that in a future episode, why we're not and where we go. But do subscribe so you can get episodes updated and sent to you as they come out. Next episode, episode 13 is a surprise. I'm not going to spoil that one. As you know, if you listen to last week's episode, I told you what we're doing this week. That's not going to happen every week, but hopefully Tuesday you'll find out who is there. The blog is up theepodcastreport.com 12 There are no specific links this week, but there is the ability to interact with the audience and there is the ability to tweet. The big idea that we had at the beginning of this Would love a review@itunes thepodcastreport.com iTunes will take you there. The podcastreport.com Stitcher will take you there. If you'd rather make your comments there thepodcastreport.com tunein all those places are there. We'd love a review. The email address for the show is the podcastreportoutlook.com would love your comments. Talk to you next week. Bye.