A short transcript excerpt from a YouTube conversation (recorded Dec 4, 2020) between Ricardo Molina and another speaker about ideal episode length for B2B episodic marketing. The speakers recommend a typical range of 20–40 minutes for video episodes (their own show often 30–45 minutes), note that audio-only podcasts sometimes run 50–60 minutes, and acknowledge that very short 10–15 minute episodes can work well for social media and brand awareness. They advise that hosts should not be afraid to extend episodes for high-value guests because longer recordings enable repurposing (e.g., creating audio podcasts and chopping clips for other channels).
What would be the length of that episode? And I think that would be the question that many people would be having. What would be that particular length? Is it best to do it 10 minutes an hour? What works best?
Yeah. So think about it this way. It's almost like saying, hey, what's the best length for a Netflix episode? And as we can all agree, like, it really does vary. However, there tends to be some form of an average or a median, and usually it's anywhere from 20 minutes to 40 minutes. I'm reflecting on our own show right now that we're currently running. That's anywhere from like, yeah, like 30 to 45 minutes. Sometimes traditionally, you know, like podcast episodes, like audio only podcast episodes to provide a comparison. Sometimes these would go up to like 50, 60 minutes. Sometimes some people like to do two birds with one stone and say, you know what, one of the things we're going to be repurposing from our event is we want to also get audio podcasts, for example. And so they decide to create longer videos as a result of that, because they have a vision and they're planning to get a lot of different things out of it. So to tell you the truth, it's really up to each show and each audience and what makes the most sense. But if we're starting from scratch, I would say anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes as such.
And by the way, I've seen many people in the events industry doing what they call these shows, and they do it like very short. It's just 10 minutes or 15 minutes. And I think this works very well as well for social media and brand awareness. But do not be scared to if you have one big important person that you have on your show to extend it, because that's kind of where the beauty of repurposing comes through. And then probably then is a kind of a good way to kind of come back to the framework. So the don't be scared to make it longer. Because if the conversation is good, if the conversation is hot, if the conversation is topical, then you're going to have amazing opportunities to chop and slice and dice that moving forward.
