Today we’re launching the first in a series of posts designed to help businesses get started on Facebook. If there’s a specific topic you’d like to see covered, feel free to let us know in the comments. In the meantime, we’ll start with a basic question: How do Facebook ads work?

More than 1.2 billion people use Facebook, and more than 30 million businesses have active Pages.¹ Facebook ads are designed to help businesses reach the right people with the right messages.

As an advertiser on Facebook, you can choose the audiences you want for your ads. We offer tools that help you reach people based on traits and categories like:

When people are on Facebook, they may see your ad in News Feed — the personal stream of updates from their friends, family and things they care about. Since your ads reach people based on who they are and their interests, they’ll be more relevant to the people who see them.

Want to try creating a Facebook ad? Click here to get started.

We’ll continue the Getting Started series in the coming weeks with more information on how Facebook Pages and ads work.

We’re also offering hands-on training for small and medium businesses this summer through Facebook Fit, a bootcamp-style program that offers attendees information, tools and resources to help their businesses grow stronger. The next stop for Facebook Fit is Chicago, on July 10.