How do you personally refer friends?

I always feel referral systems are awkward. I know technically how to do it, but I don't want to just spam everyone on my steam friends list or anything. Whenever I have referred people to anything, I've just told them about it in passing, and telling them to use my code feels really awkward and they usually don't end up signing up anyway. What do you do?

Yes its awkward since your referral doesn't get any type of bonus for signing up through your link. I personally show them my steam library and tell them that i got most of them from gamehag and share my referral link.

Yes, it's much easier to refer people if they get something extra by using your referral. What can happen is you tell someone about a thing, they might even click your link to check it out but not do anything until much later and they won't care about using your ref link.