I started to really build my following on Mastodon when Twitter fired their accessibility team, which was the same time as all the other Twitter disasters that drove people away. However, I had it really easy: I’m blind, in the blind community, and follow lots of others in that community, so I just needed to look through people’s followers and shout about my username and instance, and everything came together. I have people who have expressed interest in joining but who are not blind or part of any other specific community like that; they just want to check it out. I’m not really sure what that’s like, and not sure what to recommend to them either. Are there some hashtag lists anywhere so people can find posts/users that align with whatever they might be interested in? How do “normal people” find their people?
I would say it depends on your friends. But, studies have shown the majority of social media users are lurkers so it would probably make sense for them to be on a medium to large instance. Just recommend them an instance instead of potentially overwhelming them with a ton of information. Everyone mentions hashtags but a big one is clients, those can absolutely make the experience. So, in all recommend an instance then like 1-3 clients, follow hashtags and make an #introduction post