Our 5 Most Popular Blog Posts of 2016
2016 was an awesome year for the Betabound community. Our community grew by 25% and we launched new initiatives like Refer a Friend, Women Behind Betabound series, step-by-step tips on applying to our beta tests, and more!
For 2017, we have even bigger plans in store. We’ll be launching a beautiful, rebranded redesign of our website, interviews with Centercode clients’ product teams, and public Betabound Exclusive tests that any Betabounder can join! In rolling up our sleeves to prepare for all these exciting launches, it’s helpful for us to take a step back and reflect on the things that made this past year so great — like blog posts!
The Betabound Blog is the educational powerhouse of our community. Whether you’re new to Betabound or a veteran beta tester, we recommend clicking through our posts for beta testing advice, tech trends, interviews with beta industry professionals, platform updates, community survey announcements, and more. To get you started, here are the five most popular blog posts published in 2016:
1. Women Behind Betabound: Emily Hossellman
Emily Hossellman is the Marketing Director at Centercode (the company behind Betabound), and the star of this year’s most popular blog post. Since joining the Centercode team, Emily has helped triple the size of Centercode and currently manages a team of five talented female marketers. She also plays a huge role in the development of the Betabound community from writing informative blog posts (like Unintentionally Violating Your NDA and The 7 Major Beta Tester Responsibilities) to providing us guidance with the upcoming Betabound site redesign and how to achieve overall community growth goals.
In this inspiring (must-read) interview, Emily discusses how to encourage women interested in beta testing, the unique role mothers can play as beta testers, and how women can have a bigger voice in product development.
2. Your Complete Beta Testing Cheat Sheet
There are four key stages of being a beta tester: the application process, getting accepted, participating in the test, and then the aftermath. This is a cheat sheet of shortcuts to our recommended resources while you’re participating in the different stages of the testing process. So if you’re looking for tips on how to get started by applying to one of our beta tests, we have a host of links to our favorite blog posts that will point you in the right direction.
3. 10 Common Questions Asked by Testers
Our team is always receiving questions from eager testers, so we composed this blog post to address the ten most common ones that pop up in our email inboxes. This post concisely addresses everything from our community signup process to what exactly beta testers do. Although newbie testers tend to find this resource really valuable, it could never hurt to give it a read and see if you might learn something new about the Betabound community!
4. The Value of Our Tester Community
We were blown away by the positive feedback we received from our Thanksgiving-themed blog post. To anyone that emailed us a quick shout-out or commented on the blog post — thank you! Our team really appreciated your kind words, and that’s what this post was all about — giving thanks to our terrific testing community. We hope every Betabounder has the opportunity to read this thank-you note, and learn more about why we value the wide diversity of demographics, testing interests, platforms, and experiences prevalent within Betabound.
5. 5 Ways to Get More Involved with Betabound
We’re always impressed by how excited Betabounders are about our community and their eagerness to get more involved. Admittedly, it can be very competitive to be selected for our Betabound Exclusives, so we wrote this blog post as a way to recommend new channels of getting involved as a beta tester. Some of our advice includes checking the Betabound homepage for unaffiliated testing opportunities you can participate in right away, as well as following and engaging with us on social media. For more great tips, check out this post!
This year has been a great year for the Betabound community, and we’re planning on 2017 being even bigger and better. As always, our goal is to grow the Betabound community but make it more fun and engaging along the way. That means more beta testing opportunities, a fresh coat of paint on our site, and new blog posts. So if there’s ever a topic you’d like to see discussed, feel free to comment below, tweet us @Betabound, or email us at hello@betabound.com. We’d love to hear your requests!