Indeed the onboarding process is a bit tricky on Hive.
I generally refer people through Ecency, usually people go the mobile route. And mostly people have managed to get their accounts started that way. If not, one can always go the route that costs you 3 Hive to create.
But in the end, the thing that works best on Hive to get new users started is a coaching process. Hive DOES have a higher learning curve than Facebook. But we all know that it is 100x more rewarding to the average user. It is NOT yet in the same position for a business who can spend money to reach thousands of users with the quick transaction.
The goal should be for us to onboard more people, especially relevant if we can manage to onboard those near us. My local suburb has 12 users within 6 households. Should this build up, it should reach a point of critical mass.
My other angle is to onboard an entire interest-group to Hive!
My third angle is the Busy Bees, which is a group on Hive that is just a diverse collection of active bloggers!