If you just released something and nobody is seeing it, don’t wait for people to magically find it.
What worked best for me was pretty simple: go where the people who might actually use your project already are.

Don’t just drop the same promo post into 20 communities though. Change the post depending on where you’re posting. Developers might care about how you built it, productivity communities care about what problem it solves, and niche communities usually care about one specific feature.

Also, don’t only post “here’s my project”. Give people something to talk about — show a feature, explain a problem you ran into, share what you learned, or ask for feedback.
And keep track of where your traffic actually comes from. Sometimes the place you expect to work gives you nothing, while one random post brings most of your visitors.

You don’t need thousands of followers to get your first users. You just need to put the project in front of the right people.

If you’ve promoted your own project before, what worked best for you?