If you want your account to be discovered by more people with similar interests, here are some tips:
- Write something about yourself on your profile. It doesn’t have to be personal info, but it should let people know you’re a human being and give them some idea of what you’re interested in.
- If you want the entire text of your public posts to be completely searchable, even without any hashtags, you can opt into being part of the full text search system
- If you have a website, include a link to it on your profile and also link to your profile from your website. Remember to have https:// at the beginning so that people can click on it.
- Also, if you have a website, you might want to verify the website link too, as this will make people know you’re the owner of the site and also make your account appear on discovery services such as StreetPass ⧉.
- Make sure the first line of your profile text sums you up well, as Fediverse discovery systems often only show the first line.
- If you want to, add a profile picture and header image, but these are both optional. Blind people often don’t use images on their profiles, so it is totally normal for a profile to have no images on it.
- Write a public post saying something about yourself, and include the hashtags #Introduction, #Introductions and #NewHere. Try also searching for these hashtags and replying to other people’s introductions.
- Pin your introduction post on your profile by clicking the post’s ⋯ icon and selecting Pin on profile. For various technical reasons to do with “backfilling”, pinned posts are much more visible than ordinary posts.
- Remember to use hashtags in posts that you want to be discovered, as lots of people follow hashtags and they are a very popular discovery method on the Fediverse.
- Try joining and posting to Fediverse groups, they are seen even more widely than hashtags and can be a good way to connect with others interested in specific topics.
- Include text descriptions on your images, video or audio. A lot more people will share those posts, as accessibility is valued on the Fediverse.
- Join in with conversations, follow other people, and eventually you’ll get some follows back. See here for tips on how to find people to follow.
- After you’ve been on here a while, add yourself to the directory at Trunk ⧉ and the directory at Fediverse.info ⧉. There are instructions on these sites telling you how to add yoursrelf.
- On Mastodon, log in through your server’s website, go to Edit profile > Suggest account to others, tick the box and click Save changes. This will add you to automated follow suggestions that others may see.
When to post your best content
Don’t post your best content when you have literally zero followers. Fediverse servers “notice” posts from accounts that their members follow. If you post stuff when you have 0 followers then your post won’t be visible to anyone except users on your own server. Even having a handful of followers will make your posts a lot more visible, because all of your followers’ servers will notice what you post.