I search tags, and if someone posts something interesting under a tag I like, I’ll check their page out.

No idea. I mainly follow tags lol

Like the other user said following tags is a great way to engage with things you choose. Along the way, you’ll find people that you find interesting and then you can follow them directly. It’s much less about seeking people and more letting them come to you.

One way is to just follow hashtags and see whoposts to them. Since hashtags are basically the de facto way to find relevant content on Mastodon, not just a marketing tool like on Twitter. And then once you see who posts interesting stuff, you can then add them to your follows.

There’s also some sites that list users by topics of interesting such as http://fedi.directory and https://communitywiki.org/trunk .

Another way is to check out instances that talk about things you’re interested in. There are several websites that list them but here is a shorter list: https://fedi.garden Check out their feeds and see who posts things you’re interested in.

Furthermore, you can follow a.gup.pe accounts, called “groups”, which work similarly to hashtags. Each a.gup.pe account is basically a repeater that boosts (i.e. “retweets”) every post that pings it, so that anyone following it gets that post. For example, I follow @climate@a.gup.pe, and every time someone pings that (it’s like including a hashtag), it’ll boost that post and I’ll see it too.

If you’re on their mobile app, press and hold the home button for a second or so, and a list of recommended accounts will show up.

@jasonwaterfalls @Elegast I’ve just starting searching hashtags and finding people to follow that way