Malaysiakini ’s official Facebook page for its English site registered its 1,000,000th follower at 11am on Saturday, six years after it was launched.

The page has grown steadily since 2009 and saw an exponential growth of nearly 300 percent last year.

Its Bahasa Malaysia page was first to reach its first million milestone last year, and now stands at 1.14 million followers, while the Chinese page has recorded over 600,000 followers.

In total, Malaysiakini’s Facebook pages have more than 2.75 million fans.

“ Malaysiakini has been among the major trend-setters in the country’s social media landscape. We face stiff competition from rival websites but managed to take the lead despite all odds,” said Malaysiakini’s social media editor Norman Goh.

The country’s leading independent news portal was awarded the Social Media Excellence for online news at the World Bloggers and Social Media Awards in 2014.

“Social media plays a key role in ensuring our stories reach a wider audience where our readers ‘share’ Malaysiakini stories through their social network,” Goh explained.

Goh stressed the need to build a strong Malaysiakini brand through an effective social media outreach strategies on various social media platforms.

Engagements matter most

According to Socialbakers.com , Malaysiakini is also ranked among the fastest growing online media pages in Malaysia for both English and Bahasa Malaysia pages, averaging a net growth of 33,000 and 50,000 followers a month respectively.

Facebook ’s insights data on Malaysiakini shows an average of 3.5 million organic reaches or impressions per week with about 14 percent - or more than 500,000 engagements - through ‘likes’, ‘comments’ and ‘shares’.

Frequent changes in Facebook algorithms for users’ news feed have affected many brands worldwide. However, Malaysiakini’s page has kept its steady growth of organic reaches to users.

In the 2014 report by ‘We Are Social’ on social, digital and mobile usage in Malaysia, there are more than 15.6 million active Facebook users.

The report also revealed that 64 percent Malaysians are active on social media and spending an average of three hours a day on various social media platforms.

Malaysia is also ranked among the highest Facebook penetration in the Asia-Pacific region at 53 percent of the total population.