"Whether you're a hot-dog vendor in Boston or design firm in Santa Fe, you will be producing video for the Web," says Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey. "Video is how your customers will find you."

The consumer market for watching online video is huge. About 11 billion videos were shown in September, according to Nielsen Online.

But most small businesses have yet to add video to their Web sites. Those that do usually begin by embracing free and easy tools at YouTube, Vimeo and others, sites that are geared more toward consumers who want to share family clips or humorous videos.

Now, a new wave of services has cropped up to help businesses get their work online, via networks that are similar in operation to YouTube but that offer more controls and customer service , for a fee. Sorenson Media's 360, Fliqz and VideoBloom are among those aiming at the small and midsize business market.

"Video is the single-most-effective form of communication, much more so than text or pictures," says Peter Csathy, CEO of Sorenson Media. "We would much prefer, in general, to watch a video over reading text."

Here's how the video networks work:

*Upload your videos to the sites, sorensonmedia.com, fliqz.com or videobloom.com, where they are hosted.

*Tweak the video player to include your company name.

*Grab a code to place the video on your site or blog.

*Share the video privately with clients for approvals.

*Get access to data about how many views the video has pulled in.

*Pay a monthly fee. Sorenson and Fliqz start at $99 monthly.

Big media sites use similar video-delivery networks. That part of the market is dominated by Brightcove.

Most small businesses try the free route first, says McQuivey. But they often become stymied when their videos are lumped in with funny cats, lip-syncing teens and parody videos, and don't like it when YouTube, for instance, deems to place ads at the beginning of the videos. They can also become frustrated with the lack of customer service.

"About 2% of small businesses have begun to adopt video," says Fliqz CEO Benjamin Wayne. "They don't understand yet how it will drive their business. That will change in the next two years." (continued...)

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