How many hashtags has #zapier on Instagram.
How a single workflow turned 50,000 Instagram posts into a lead list
Every single one is someone publicly telling you they use automation tools. They took time out of their day to create content about a specific piece of software, which means they’re not casual users. They’re invested. They care enough to post about it.
Here’s the thing about hashtags that most people miss.
We treat them as a discovery mechanism. You post with hashtags so people find your content. That’s the standard playbook. But flip it around and hashtags become something completely different: a live, constantly updated database of people who’ve already self-identified around a specific topic.
#nocode. #aiautomation. #zapier. #make. Every post under those tags is a signal. Someone sat down, created content, and attached a label to it that tells you exactly what world they live in. That’s more useful market intelligence than most paid research tools will ever give you.
The problem has always been collecting it. You can search a hashtag manually and scroll through posts one by one. But that’s not a workflow. That doesn’t scale. And it definitely doesn’t give you the structured data you need to actually do something with it.
So I built a workflow in Needle that does it automatically.
How it works
You pick a hashtag. Paste it into the workflow template. Connect a Google Sheet with the right column headers. Run it.
Within minutes, every post under that hashtag starts populating your sheet: the Instagram URL, the post content, and the account that created it. The workflow loops through the paginated data until it’s exhausted every result. You end up with a clean, structured list you can actually work with.
No code. No API keys. No scraping infrastructure to set up or maintain. Just a workflow template and a Google Sheet.
I tested it first on #zapier because those are my people. Anyone posting about Zapier is already sold on the idea of automation. They understand the value. They’ve bought into the category. They just haven’t found Needle yet, or maybe they have and they’re comparing.
Either way, I want to talk to them.
What you actually do with the data
This is where it gets interesting.
The most obvious use case is outreach. You now have a list of people who posted original content about a specific topic. That’s not a cold list. You have context: you know exactly what they made, what they said, what angle they took. Your opener writes itself.
“Hey, saw your post about the five tools to automate marketing workflows. Curious if you’ve ever tried building that same flow in Needle. Happy to set it up for you.”
That’s not cold outreach. That’s a warm conversation backed by genuine context. The response rate difference is significant.
But beyond outreach, the data is surprisingly useful for everything else too.
If you’re trying to find influencer partners, this is your list. People posting original automation content with real engagement aren’t just users. They’re builders with an audience. They’re exactly who you want creating workflows on your platform and talking about it publicly.
If you’re doing content strategy, the hashtag data tells you what your audience actually cares about. Read through 200 posts tagged #zapier and patterns emerge fast. The same frustrations come up repeatedly. The same use cases. The same comparisons. That’s your content calendar, your landing page copy, your next video topic, all extracted from what real people are already saying in public.
And if you’re doing competitive research, scraping your competitor’s branded hashtag is one of the most underrated moves in the playbook. You get a full picture of who’s using the product, what they’re building, what they love, what they complain about. Better than any G2 review.
The workflow is live
Pick any hashtag that matters to your business. Connect a Google Sheet. Run it and see what comes back.
For me the list from #zapier alone was worth it: a mix of agencies, solo creators, consultants, and developers all actively posting about automation. Exactly the audience I’m building for.
The template is free on Needle. You just need to know which hashtag to start with.
Which hashtag are you scraping first? I’m curious what niches people are going after, drop it in the comments.