Several years ago, I wrote this piece titled, "A complete Sloth’s Guide to Mastodon, Part I: get your feet wet"

https://medium.com/@arinbasu/a-complete-sloths-guide-to-mastodon-9cda44e1f288
Mastodon has advanced a lot since then, but the basic principles are still pretty much the same.

You may find it useful.
(This was the old Mastodon, :-) )