Podcasts: How Long is Long Enough

What's the Sweet Spot?

Attention spans are falling. It's not that this problem is new. As a journalist I was taught to put the compelling information on top. Most readers would drop off before the tenth paragraph. (subheadings helped). In radio, stopset content over a minute causes tune out. Writers of long blogs are doomed. Maybe 5 percent might stick around for the conclusion. The sweet spot for YouTube is about four minutes. Since the inception of the smartphone, attention spans have dropped dramatically. Millennials have an attention span of eight seconds, but they aren't the only ones. 

Length A Barrier?

When it comes to podcast, length is for me. I'll often read the description, look at the length of the podcast, and find myself wishing I could read the text. I would rather skim the article to look for the pertinent information, then, if intrigued, I'll fill in the details by reading other parts of the article. If there is no text, I look at the length and usually decide not to bother. 45, 35 even 25  minutes seems daunting. I'm looking for the CliffsNotes version.

Podcast Sweet Spot

AudacitytoPodcast.com suggests the sweet spot is 30 to 45 minutes, about the length of a commute. That's really generous.

Cision.com claims the average length of a podcast is about 30 minutes with users actually listening 22 minutes. They cite the average commute at 20 minutes. Users prefer podcasts that are 16 minutes.

7 Podcasting Best Practice

Cision's Recommendations

1. Respect People's Time 
2. Plan Your Content 
3. Augment the Audio with Text (the complete text) 
4. Don't Use Listens to Measure Success 
5. Distribute - Promote - Embed 
6. Benchmark 
7. Master the Audio 

Longer isn't always better. In fact, longer doesn't seem to work for readers on the web. Slate found in 2013 that readers can't stay focused. About 5 percent of people who land on Slate pages and are engaged with the page in some way. Attention span is way down. A survey of Canadian media consumption by Microsoft concluded that the average attention span had fallen to eight seconds, down from 12 in the year 2000. We now have a shorter attention span than goldfish.