53. Should I Split a Long Interview Into Two Episodes? Podcasting Strategies for Content

FAQ Friday answering the question of "Should I Split a Long Interview Into Two Episodes?"

This episode was produced by me, The Podcast Teacher! Contact me at Hello@ThePodcastTeacher.com.

Transcript

Welcome to Podcasting for solopreneurs and FAQ Friday where I answer a common podcasting question in just 5 minutes or less. Today's question is, should I split a long interview into 2 episodes? This question comes from Podcast Startup Academy student, Jessica. Hey, Jessica. She also said that the interview content was all really good and that she didn't wanna cut any of it out. That's important because you always wanna cut out any fluff or rambling to streamline the content consumption for your audience, and this can often trim down a long interview to fit kind of within your usual time frame. If an interview is significantly longer than your normal episodes and there's nothing to cut out, then, yes, I would recommend splitting it into 2 parts. The reason for this is that your audience probably is used to allotting a certain amount of time for your show. Like, oh, my commute is 15 minutes, and Julia's episodes are usually 15 minutes or less.

So I always pop 1 on during my drive, and I know that it will be done by the time I get to work. If the episode is significantly longer, then the listener will have to make a point to come back to it later, which, of course, they can do. That's part of the beauty of podcasting and on demand content, but a lot of people are probably going to forget to come back. So breaking it into 2 parts eliminates the need for people to remember to come back. When you're choosing where to split the interview, try to cut it at a cliffhanger type moment to make your audience itching to come back for part 2. If there's not a good cliffhanger, record a few sentences to insert at the end of part 1 that gives them a tease of what's to come in part 2. Again, the goal is trying to get them excited and interested about the second half. If you have a podcasting question, click the send me your question link in the episode description, and I'll answer it in an upcoming episode.

Until next time. Happy podcasting.