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No doubt there are many out there who would scoff at the fact that today’s politicians, in the run up to the general election, are making a beeline for women’s mags and daytime TV.

Ok, so being questioned by Kate Garraway might not be quite the same as being grilled by Paxman but, argues Mike Girling, Nick Clegg’s press officer: “Those interviews can be quite tough in their own way.” And Martin Frizell, former editor of GMTV, agrees that being asked left-field questions about X Factor or what they’re doing for their wives on Valentine’s Day can be “shit scary”.

It’s strange to think that a “comfort zone” could include the likes of Paxman or Frost, but for steely politicians, an interview about emotions, mainstream culture and even favourite biscuits, as recently demonstrated by Gordon Brown, can be way more harrowing than being quizzed on the state of Iraq.

Women’s glossy magazine, Red, is currently gearing up for an election special for its May edition featuring interviews with Brown, Cameron and Clegg. According to research carried out by the magazine, nine out of 10 of Red’s 225,000 readers will vote in the general election yet 48% say they haven’t decided who they’ll be supporting.

And it’s not just the party leaders who are being advised to focus on women’s media. Sarah Brown guest edited Fabulous, the News of the World’s female-focused supplement, last year but reviews were mixed.

MediaGuardian deputy editor Vicky Frost, commented that there was too much of Wellbeing for Women, of which Brown is patron, and too little of Brown’s life:

“I’m not saying she needed to star in the fashion shoot - although that really would have been fabulous - but what about a one-pager about life with her own kids, or healthy dinners she cooks,” Frost said.

Perhaps Brown and Cameron should sit tight in their comfort zones and let their wives spill some election winning gossip. With neither Sarah Brown or Samantha Cameron having ever given an interview, they could well clinch it for their steely loved ones…

Today’s guest blog post by Ben Furber, a design and communications professional based in Manchester who specialises in political and non-profit organisations, and who has worked on new media campaigns for Labour, focuses on how politicians are working hard to win over she who knows best: Mum…

Every week one columnist or another is hypothesising about what the general election will be about. So when, in November, Rachel Sylvester wrote that the ‘election will be won at the school gate’ and cited the Biscuitgate affair on Mumsnet, I paid the column little attention.Why wouldn’t I? I’m a young single male with no plans for or interest in having dependents any time soon. But now, once again, Mumsnet is on my radar. On Friday, with exclamation marks and many profanities, I was emailed a link to a Mumsnet forum thread — 35 pages then (and 38 pages now) of its readers’ very own David Cameron billboards. Clearly not all of the 140,000 plus attempts have been generated by political activists!

Luckily for me I was in the same room as a young mother, so I asked her: ‘What’s with Mumsnet?’ She told me: “When you have a question, it’s where you go. When you’re concerned about something, it’s where you go. When you need support, it’s where you go.”

This was when it clicked. Mumsnet isn’t just a website, it is a community — just like the coffee mornings that go on all over the country on a daily basis in community centres and local churches, but virtual and available twenty-four hours a day. It’s Mums and Dads meeting, talking and providing each other with support.

Many candidates are prepared to sell their right arms to talk to these community groups, explaining their party’s family and child policies. No wonder the parties centrally are doing the same with Mumsnet.

The perceived wisdom is based on a fine communications model: senior party officers flood the lobby with targeted policies and spin, hoping the national media will write about it and those that glance at a paper the next day read the headline. At the same time the well connected candidates talk to those local community groups that they can blag their way into. But as Mumsnet (as well as others) show, there is a new way of connecting, a better way of connecting.

Local campaigning is working for Labour this year - that return to the fundamentals of what it is to ask someone for their vote. In many places this is being done effortlessly. The street endorser and direct mail models are working wonders. But at the other end we have a hostile national and mainstream media which continues to try to convince the public that the election has already happened and Cameron has won with a landslide.

What Number 10 seem to have understood with Mumsnet is that instead of relying on journalists with their clear editorial focus, specific groups can be talked to direct. So politicians have started talking straight to engaged groups at a national level, just like they do in community centres,  but they are now doing so online.

But more is needed.

It could be the tip of the iceberg: the parties could start talking about the benefits of community campaigning versus local campaigning, not because it’s fundamentally difficult  - it isn’t - but because it increases the scope and provides the additional focus of new and social media.

So we all know about Mumsnet now, great. But there are others, too, and time needs to be put into finding those groups and communicating with their users.

It is scary for a lot of people, accepting and understanding that certain websites have the potential to engage - just as we do on the doorstep. But everyone needs to. Mumsnet provides all the data needed. There are interested groups online with diverse interests that are becoming communities. With over 350 Cameron billboards submitted on Mumsnet, these communities are clearly engaged and each one, each Mum, is a constituent.

For once, it was something on BBC Question Time that Britain’s three main political parties could agree on - they can’t stand Nick Griffin and the BNP.

Between them, some points were scored; but the true dissection of the country’s favourite political bogeyman came not from politicians, but from cultural commentator, Bonnie Greer.

Claiming to know nothing about politics, let’s call her, for a moment, the “product reviewer” of the BNP. And in that, she set about discrediting the most fundamental claims about the party’s “product”. Was she providing a critique of policy or the things Griffin has said in the past (many of which he now denies or claims he no longer believes)? No, she was concerned with the BNP’s apparent inability to get basic facts right about the origins of “the British”, which they seek to represent.

And with a predominantly calm demeanour, she was subtly raising the question: “If you can’t get your own story straight, how can you expect us to want you to govern?” And could be it be any more humiliating for Griffin to be invited to the British Library to sort out his knowledge?

And the basis of her “product review” came from - yes - that most ubiquitous of marketing tools, the party’s website. 

If Nick Griffin felt it was a PR coup speaking for his party on the BBC’s flagship political panel programme, he might think again. No PR can make up for a fundamentally flawed product.

Earlier this week I gave a workshop on PR and social media at the CIPR Northern Conference at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds.  One of the examples I covered was the work that the team at Staniforth has done with this blog.  You don’t really get the full perspective when your are on stage so I was astounded at just how big the blog looked on screen when this picture popped into my inbox (courtesy of Don’t Panic’s Andy Wake).  The post in question is a piece on art by my colleague and fellow blogger Julie Wilson.

I found out later that whilst I was talking another blogger was backstage behind the screen bashing at the keys of a laptop just a few feet away.  Alastair Campbell was opining on Osborne’s oratory at the Tory conference before taking to the stage for the keynote speech at our event.  I’m sort of glad I didn’t know that at the time.

As the Conservative Party prepares to complete the conference season in Manchester on Monday and launches the online campaigning tool, myconservatives.com, (seen here in Beta form), PR Media Blog put questions to Jeremy Hunt, Shadow Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport and Spokesman for Online Campaigning. The questions and answers were supplied in written form and have been reproduced as such.

PR Media Blog: The Tories are way ahead in the polls. Does it matter what the party does online between now and election day?

Jeremy Hunt: While the Party is currently ahead in the opinion polls, the only poll that matters is on General Election day and we’re taking absolutely nothing for granted.

In terms of our online efforts, we’re the only party that has committed consistent time, effort and resource into online communications since the last General Election, and you can be sure that digital will continue to play a massive part of our engagement with voters.

PRMB: David Cameron has been dismissive of Twitter where people in the other parties have embraced it as a communications tool. Is he worried that encouraging Tory MPs to use it would be too uncontrollable and risk re-toxifying the Conservative brand?

JH: Twitter is the fashionable tool of choice at the moment, but as Thomas Gensemer of Blue State Digital said: “Services like Twitter are scattershot and dizzying. They burn political capital. Besides, they don’t talk to the people you want to talk to.”

It’s OK using Twitter if, like Grant Shapps, you already have an email list of over 10,000 local residents with whom you can communicate directly. But many Labour and LibDem MPs have a totally disproportionate attitude to it - how many of Kerry McCarthy’s constituents are on Twitter? I’d be amazed if it was over 10%.

It’s not fear of Twitter by any stretch of the imagination - our Party account has more followers than Labour and the LibDems combined, and several public facing staffers are on there too and constantly engaging with people - it’s rather that our MPs and Candidates focus on the digital activities on channels that matter in their local campaigns - websites, email, Facebook and supporter mobilisation.

PRMB: Do you see so-called “right wing” bloggers such as Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes as the Tories’ natural allies online in the run up to the election?

JH: The dominance of the centre-right in British political blogging is a testament to their quality and independence, and though we have a relationship with almost all of the big beasts in this world, it is up to them to decide on their editorial line.

The top centre-right bloggers are, however, part of a broader Conservative movement that is looking to challenge the wastefulness, incompetence and lack of vision in this current Labour Government.

PRMB: Does having a social media presence conflict with the Conservatives’ need to control the message very tightly in the coming months?

It’s important for any political party to have a clear, distinctive message so the voters know exactly what we stand for. However, it’s equally important to be reaching out to voters so they can ask us questions and figure out if they want us to be the next government. Social media offers us an excellent opportunity to have that conversation and open ourselves up to public scrutiny, but so do other channels.

Email is still the most accessible engagement tool out there and public meetings provide a great way to engage directly. David Cameron has also held almost fifty ‘Cameron Direct’ events over the past year, engaging with over 10,000 people face-to-face and answering their questions on a range of subjects.

PRMB: Is the party afraid that social media will become the source of damaging stories or allegations that will turn the polls against it? How well prepared is the party to deal with a scandal erupting online?

JH: We saw from the Draper-McBride scandal what happens when a central Party tries to take control of independent, online media - it ended in the kind of fiasco and disgrace that will come to define Labour’s approach to the internet in the minds of most people for many years to come.

The Conservative Party inherently understands that online communications comes with risks, but that the opportunities are too great to ignore.

PRMB: I’ve read that the party is going to advertise on Spotify. In what way is this the right medium for a political party to engage with the electorate? Is this just trying to piggy-back on the latest “hot thing”?

JH: Your advertising strategy has to be about reaching out to people who would never ordinarily engage with your content - or even be that interested in politics and platforms like Spotify (or Google AdWords, which we’ve also used with significant results) are a great way of reaching new audiences.

We’re absolutely not about going for the latest “hot thing” - if a platform wasn’t going to be effective for us or offer value for money then we wouldn’t use it.

PRMB: Does the party think it will harness online communities in the way Barack Obama did ahead of his presidential win?

JH: Can we emulate Obama? US elections are very different in tone, size and scale to ours in the UK but we are the Party that has best understood and adopted the lessons they learnt last year. Obama’s achievements in terms of organising activists and raising money have certainly raised the bar in terms of what a political party can achieve online and we’re obviously looking to do something similar in Britain.

To that end, we’re launching something very exciting at Party Conference - the most advanced political campaigning tool outside the USA, and the endpoint of our content and supporter recruitment strategies.

On Saturday BBC News invited Staniforth managing director and PR Media Blog contributor, Rob Brown to comment on how and why the Prime Minister’s wife, Sarah Brown, has soared to the height of Twitter followers, overtaking even Stephen Fry.

Here’s what he had to say…

The Labour Party’s final conference before the next General Election - and perhaps its last as Government for the next few years - begins on Monday. How will the party hope to engage with the electorate and stave off what looks now like an inevitable defeat? PR Media Blog spoke to Kerry McCarthy, recently appointed new media campaigns spokeswoman about how the social media sphere is influencing Labour’s communications.

If New Labour will be forever associated with anything in the English language, it will be the phrase “on message” and the word “spin”.

Tight, centralised control of communications and an unfortunate habit of using the ugly face of public relations to manipulate the truth has peppered much of New Labour’s time in power.

And while US congressman, Joe Wilson, recently caused a furore when he shouted “You lie!” at President Obama mid-speech, such an outburst against Tony Blair - if it had happened - following the exposure as fiction of the Iraq “dodgy dossier” would probably have been roundly applauded in the Commons.

This year’s Labour “Smeargate” scandal and the ensuing departure of government advisers, Damien McBride and Derek Draper, raised questions about Labour’s relationship with dirty tricks in the communications department.

But the party’s new media campaigns spokeswoman, Kerry McCarthy - or “Twitter Tsar” - believes that by embracing social media, Labour is making itself both more transparent and accountable.

Speaking of Smeargate, she says: “It was a tricky period. It was wrong, the ideas that were being kicked around - we don’t need to stoop to that level.”

But she also laments the growth of what she describes as “right wing blogs”: “I would be quite depressed if we had need for a Guido Fawkes on our side. The difficulty with blogs like that, and Iain Dale’s, is that they are not elected politicians and they would be held up to certain standards if they were. We haven’t got sites spreading smears about people.” 

Yet the idea that Labour might lean on a Labour blogger who was writing scandalous copy is not the case, says McCarthy: “If it was a keen, young activist we wouldn’t have any control over it. But I don’t think it’s a control freak thing to say we think it’s wrong and unprincipled. We don’t want the Labour Party tarnished with this.”

But how does a party with a history of autocratic control over communications relinquish its rule? “You can’t control it in the way Labour controlled the message in 1997 and afterwards. The news agenda has changed,” she says. “News is so much more rapid and also there is the commentary from a myriad of voices. The issues are all over the blogosphere and Twitter and it would be obvious if politicians are parroting soundbites. If you have got lots of different media outlets there is more chance that truth will come out. Stories get another life online.

“And [social media] is also about how [politicians] respond to people when they are challenged. Getting into debates [online] there is no way you can dictate that from the behind the scenes.”

But at a time when Labour is trailing in the polls and needs clarity about why people should vote for them, isn’t the idea of  MPs having countless, public conversations in social networks counter productive? McCarthy says: “Though politicians might have differing views on things, what comes through are the underlying principles and values.”

She draws a comparion between Labour’s immersion in social media and what she sees as the Tories’ reluctance: “I think it will be difficult for the Tories as it will be the maverick voices and the wilder elements of the party that will stand out”.

Labour is experimenting with different social media activities, including a way of using Twitter to make grass roots activists feel more included in debates at party conferences.

But is there a risk that Labour positioning itself as the “social media party” will detract from the real issues the public care about? “We’ve been careful about this,” says McCarthy, “as there’s nothing worse than politicians trying to be trendy. Authenticity is important and people will see if we are using it as a gimmick.

“Twitter is a two-way thing and it’s done in public, reaching a much wider audience. Politicians can be held more accountable so it is a useful tool.”

But how significant will social media be in helping Labour to victory in 2010? “It’s not the magic bullet that will win the election; it’s a small part of getting across the message but will help in getting activists enthused.” She notes that the need for door step campaigning and getting face-to-face with voters has not gone away.

And how does she juggle social media with the day job? “I’ve got 101 ideas for blog posts but it’s having the time to sit down and do them. With Twitter you can do it in a couple of minutes while you’re in the middle of something else.”

As the Liberal Democrats’ annual party conference in Bournemouth enters its final day, PR Media Blog talks to Mark Pack, the party’s ex-head of innovations and blogger at www.libdemvoice.org about the communications challenges facing Westminster’s “Third Party”.

PR Media Blog: What do you see as the Lib Dems’ overarching approach to communications in advance of the next election?

Mark Pack: It’s about offering change by juxtaposing the party with both Labour and the Tories. With the latter it’s about showing how the Lib Dems are different in achieving social justice and championing investment in green industries. Also, it’s Nick Clegg’s first election as party leader which provides a communications opportunity. Equally, it’s also about how we convert into real votes those people who say they’d vote for the Lib Dems if they were sure of them winning.

PRMB: In Vince Cable you have a highly credible spokesperson who can speak convincingly on complex economic issues. But the opinions of “on the ground” activists have been called “fuzzy”. How can you close that communications gap?

MP: The economy has changed so much and so rapidly in the past two years which makes it a lot more difficult to set out your stall and stick to it. At this point it’s only possible to talk about broad principles but as the election nears there will be clear policies that will be understood throughout the party.

PRMB: How can you maintain commitment at grass roots level when the party is unlikely to win or become the principal opposition at the next election?

MP: We need them to understand that there is still a lot they can achieve without having a Liberal Democrat prime minister which means getting involved with local councillors and the devolved assemblies. Issues, such as the Gurkhas, showed how being part of the Lib Dems could give people the chance to have an impact on public policy.

PRMB: Following the Obama experience in the USA, how big a part are digital communications playing for Lib Dem strategy in the run-up to the next election?

MP: The lessons learned from the US elections are about how to energise local campaigning, which sits well with the Lib Dem approach. In real terms, the digital revolution for politics in Britain has been felt in the less exciting and more logistical end operating behind the scenes. In future, people power online in the UK is more likely to be felt in engagement with public policy, such as the success of websites like “They Work for You”, than in electioneering.

Nevertheless, the online sphere is something that’s relied on locally more and more, with local MPs having significant numbers of people on their email lists which can equate to the quantity of votes needed to win in an election. That aside, there’s still a place for knocking on doors and making telephone calls.

PRMB: Nick Clegg responded to David Cameron’s claim that there was “barely a cigarette paper” between his party and the Lib Dems in certain areas by calling him a “con man”. Are Lib Dems’ communications tactics about to get nastier and more personal?

MP: Along with the next election being about judgement and instinct, it can’t avoid also being a personal discussion about leaders and their teams.

With all the uproar about phone blagging and What Andy Coulson Knew, you may have missed the fact that the Public Administration Committee has been holding a public hearing on how the government uses, and misuses, language.

On the Today programme Matthew Parris made the usual cheap shots at “spin”, but what was more interesting was the way they singled out the creep of management speak (top down, bottom up, total envelope) into so called “accessible” language.

This isn’t about civil servant jargon - the deliverables and outputs and visions - it’s about new ways of saying nothing, using what appear to be nifty analogies (anyone remember Who Moved My Cheese?) to give the impression that was you are saying is easily understood, when in fact it’s even more obscure and nonsensical than ever.

As they played a clip of Liam Byrne, my first thought was that they hadn’t used a very good example, that he was actually using quite simple language.  It wasn’t until he reached the end that I got the point - or rather, realised that there was no point at all and he had just wasted several seconds of my life and doubtless several hundred valuable brain cells trying to figure out what on earth he was talking about. 

What we fondly used to call Fleet Street understood perfectly that simple, clear, impactful writing was the most difficult thing in the world - which is why traditionally the Sun’s sub-editors were the best paid and most jealously guarded.

I wouldn’t deny for a second that many people in corporate PR spend a great deal of time trying to say very little at length and with great authority. A vital skill in crisis management is the ability to talk to a journalist for ten minutes helpfully explaining what you can’t tell them anything at all. 

But being clear and making sense generally runs contrary to human nature - apart for the politicians, just listen to Vicky Pollard or the cute little monster in Outnumbered.  So everyone in the public sector should be making superhuman efforts to say what they actually mean. 

Iranians protesting at the outcome of the recent election have been mobilising through social networks like twitter and Facebook. 

In addition to challenging the ’surprising’ results of the presidential election, social networks are being used to organise protests and direct action.   Moreover opponent of the current regime, who claim the election was rigged, have been taking on one of the world’s largest media organisations via twitter.

Whilst organisations like the BBC and New York Times were covering the events as they unfolded, CNN was singled out by twitter users inside Iran and around the world for failing to give sufficient prominence to the outrage at the reported election result emanating from inside the country.  Twitter users in their thousands started to use the hashtag #CNNfail in their messages to point out the limited CNN coverage.   In a direct response to the demands of web users the TV network increased its coverage of events and made the protests their lead story.  

The major news brands around the world remain our most trusted sources of news and comment but the social web is emerging as a critical provider of checks and balance.