Now too many projects nowadays make it easier for us to put money in, but what I usually do is invest in new projects with a large number of social media followers, if it's on a telegram or discord group then we can know whether the discussion is natural or just settings.
If they have large number of followers, it's either they got it from social media campaigns which is you shouldn't see the numbers only. I would prefer to just look into the project and follow/research the roadmap of each projects you are interested to. Followers can get manipulated pretty easy especially this date where people can get more followers by doing bounties.