There should be a kind of “sorting hat” personality test to attract the interest of prospective Lemmy joiners. People who love solarpunk stuff, for example, would easily find their home in slrpnk.net. Set a link to it on sites like join-lemmy.org to make the fediverse more approachable to casuals.
Yeah, that’s how I do it too. Although some instances don’t seem to block it, you would have to find out which, and that may be difficult to find.