I'm running my own instance, and typically post my stuff on mastodon, so I guess I have made the first step?

It's a bit of a Catch-22 I suppose ... low numbers of viewers makes it less attractive for creators, and fewer interesting creators make it less attractive for viewers.

Taking into account the other aspects that make it less attractive for viewers (fragmentation and inconvenience ... having to dig through "Find the right instance for you" tutorials, no matter how well curated, can be a bit of a turn-off compared to just going to a central point and find what you're looking for), I don't have that much hope that it'll reach a critical mass of both viewers and creators to catapult Peertube into large-scale relevance ... as sad as I am about saying that.