@aamlynoregano Hello, indeed. Welcome to Mastodon!

The first thing to know about Mastodon is that there is no algorithm that promotes certain posts or that imposes its idea of what it thinks you want to see in your timeline. The "algorithm" is people boosting posts they like or that they think their followers will be interested in. Here, posts fly on their merits and nothing else. If a post goes viral is because lots of people boosted it.

Given this, the best thing for a newcomer is to create a post that talks about yourself a bit. "Hi, I'm new here. I'm an entomologist, married, three kids. I like music and motorcycles." Or something to that effect, long or short. People who see the post will boost it into their follower pool, so more will see it, and so on. At the moment, you only have one follower (me), but that will grow.

The second good thing for a newcomer to do is to follow others. If anyone looks interesting, follow them. Many of them will follow back. This both gets your timeline going and gets you some followers.

The third important thing about Mastodon is that hashtagging is important. You find posts on topics by searching for hash tags. You can even follow has tags, which is really useful. So you could hash tag your hello post with #mastodon #newbie #newcomer #join

More to come in a private message.