There are three basic ways to be seen on Mastodon. People either see you in the local/federated timeline, someone boosts your toot, or thru a hashtag.
Let's look at the first two...
Smaller instances will have a smaller local timeline. Same for if you start your own instance.
Which means if you're on a different instance, the odds of your content being seen are slim unless enough people boost you enough times OR they find you on the FEDERATED timeline.
Which leads to my question...
(p2)