Every so often I come across a particularly useful guide to a social media platform. Below I’ve collected a bunch of them – let me know if you have seen any others.

Slack

The Slack blog on Medium regularly share tips and case studies, but 11 Useful Tips for Getting the Most out of Slack is particularly useful.

Once you’ve got those basics, Hamster Pad have put together a guide on setting up and growing a highly engaged community with Slack

Tumblr

Tumblr – that curious hybrid of social network and blogging CMS – is still a hugely successful publishing platform. If you struggle to understand it New Republic’s recent piece on the way Tumblr is used by teens is an excellent read.

Snapchat

In a similar vein, Snapchat can feel impenetrable to older users. In ‘My Little Sister Taught Me How To “Snapchat Like The Teens”’ Ben Rosen takes you through the platform from a prolific user’s perspective.

Instagram

There are some fascinating pieces about the culture that exists around Instagram. Two good places to start are the first part of a This American Life episode on why teenage girls are “constantly telling their friends they are beautiful on Instagram” and a New York Times piece on finstagrams (fake instagram accounts):

“Finstas are private accounts that you only let your closest friends follow,” said Amy Wesson, 18, a student at Trinity College who has more than 2,700 Instagram followers and about 50 finstagram followers. “You post things you wouldn’t want people other than your friends to see, like unattractive pictures, random stories about your day and drunk pictures from parties.”

Twitter

“Twitter looks like a dead-simple service, but those humble 140 characters have been crammed full of features over the years, and the ways they interact aren’t always obvious. There are rules, and the rules generally make sense once you know them, but it’s also really easy to overlook them.”

The length of Twitter’s missing manual is evidence of just how much some of us take for granted with Twitter. It’s one of the most comprehensive guides you’ll find to the microblogging service.

Vine

Two “ultimate” guides here provide both an overview of Vine’s features and just how seriously advanced video production can be when you’re limited to six seconds.

The first ‘Ultimate Guide’ comes from Photojojo; the second, which covers various editing techniques, comes from Kyle Williams

YouTube

‘An anthropological introduction to YouTube’ is now almost 8 years old, but it’s still a terrific introduction to the platform and the history that shaped its culture.

Once you’ve watched that, explore YouTube’s own Creator Academy for lots of practical tips and interviews.