Caroline Bottomley set up RadarMusicVideos.com in March this year. Radar is a network of over 1200 filmmakers worldwide, where labels and artists can commission videos and get them promoted. To date Radar has generated well over 2,000,000 online views for videos made through them.

Music videos are pretty essential for any artist wanting to promote their music online. Having a strategy to promote them is a whole other problem for artists and labels. Here's a few tips to getting a great music video and getting it seen.

What kind of music video?

If you want to be in it, consider how you can make it exciting to watch. Straight performance videos are generally predictable, ie boring, you can guess you're going to see a singer, a guitarist, a guitar, a drummer, some drums and so on. Two budget performance videos I think are great: Kate Nash’s Foundations and Example's Me and Mandy . We get to know the artist but we get entertained at the same time. Non-performance videos can give your video much more scope for viewer entertainment. The Wave Pictures and London Elektricity two different ways of supporting the track and being very attractive. By the way, The Wave Pictures was shot in Guatemala City for a London band – so you can also access a bigger pool of talent if you're prepared to go non-performance.

What budget?

If you've got 0, you'll be best trying the first two contact groups outlined below. You might hit lucky, but expect to get a student or starter filmmaker who wants to start or build their showreel. Which doesn't necessarily mean a bad video.

If you create a budget for your video, you'll have more experienced people interested in working for you (who have a history of delivering the goods) and you get access to the third contact group below.

How do I find a filmmaker?

1. Ask friends, fans, local art colleges.

2. Contact filmmakers on YouTube and MySpace. Both sites have 'featured video' sections where you get straight to the good stuff. Or find videos you like on music video blogs – google to find them

3. Contact a professional production company or an online service like Radar Music Videos. I'm not supposed to promote us here, but we don't know of any other online commissioning/promotion services!

How do I work with a filmmaker?

Basic principles – be clear what you want in your video brief, how much money you'll spend on it and when you want it. Get this all agreed up front in writing, preferably with a contract. Here's a sample contract. Get written references from people who've worked with the filmmaker before.

If you're spending money, be prepared to give some up-front, but hold a good chunk back against rough cut approval and a small amount against final delivery. The rough cut is as it sounds, a nearly finished version of your video. All the structure will be in place, with just some minor editing and colour corrections etc to do. It's not fair on your filmmaker to start asking for major structural changes or re-shoots at this point, so be sure to have created a clear brief from the outset. Above all, keep talking. If something isn't going the way you like it, talk about it with the aim to get a great video out of it – this may not be the same thing as getting your own way.

How do I get planet earth to see my video?

Video preparation and presentation - in order of importance:

- A good thumbnail

- A good title

- Well written metadata - the text that accompanies the video

Tags - use words people might search for. A lot of sites only allow limited numbers of tags so use the best ones ie 'indie' is probably better than 'cool'

Video distribution

Self service

Post on your artist pages. Contact blogs and music sites. If you've got any good stories from your shoot, write it into your (brief) press release – and give your press release a good title. Join video sharing sites like Dailymotion, Vimeo etc, build networks of friends and promote your video – carefully, you can get suspended very easily if you're seen as a spammer. See if you can find contacts for site editors who can front page your video. It's not easy to do this but it is possible.

Professional services

There are an increasing number of businesses who claim to viralise videos. They may work, I've never tried them, but do beware. It's incredibly difficult to get a video to go viral and most companies charge up front. Get references, check them out independently before you spend anything.

If you're considering taking on a PR or digital marketing company to generally promote you, see what they can do for your online video. Also check out what they can do to get your video on TV.

What's the point?

This is something you need to establish before you do anything else. What are your objectives? Increase your mailing list? Build your MySpace friends? Promote an album? A t-shirt? Get on TV? Adapt your strategies accordingly and use URLs in your metadata to guide people to where you want them to be (mailing list sign up, T-shirt order page etc) Set some objectives and you'll know when you're winning.

Good luck, don't give up. Promoting your great video is a pretty big job but it can win you a lot of t-shirt sales if you get it right.