I've been asking people around me what is holding them from using Mastodon (even after some of them joined), and I got 4 reasons:

1) Not many people here
2) Can't find people here even if they're here
3) It looks very complicated, especially the instances thing
4) Doesn't seem too different from Birdsite so why bother

For people to adopt this platform, these four points need to be addressed. And that too in ultra-simple non-nerdy language.