Are you thinking about starting your corporate blog? Here’s a great list of some Fortune 500 Companies that are already doing it. Take a look! Some that caught my eye were Coca-Cola Conversations, Real Baking with Rose Levy Beranbaum (General Mills), and Open For Discussion (McDonalds).

The McDonald’s blog, Open For Discussion, focuses on corporate responsibility Numerous critics have pointed out McDonald’s role in obesity of today’s children, therefore, McDonald’s is using this blog to highlight and promote other ways they are helping the world. They have many contributors, including the Senior Manager Corporate Social Responsibility; the Administrative Coordinator, McDonald's Corporate Social Responsibility; the Environmental Manager, HAVI Global Solutions; and the Senior Manager, Sustainable Chain. These contributors show that McDonald’s does a lot more than serve burgers and fries, they contribute to the wellbeing of many people throughout the world.

The General Mill’s blog, Real Baking with Rose Levy Beranbaum, is written by Rose Levy Breanbaum. She writes a baking blog which is sponsored by one of General Mill’s products, Gold Metal Flour. Her writings are geared towards General Mills customers, bringing in interaction from customers on General Mills Products. She writes about her experiences with cooking and her upcoming process of publishing her cook book, with an overall wish to share her baking knowledge with others.

The Coca-Cola Conversations Blog is frequently updated with tidbits of Coca Cola history. It’s a great way for Coca Cola to keep their customers in the know about what’s going on with their product, and different dates that are important in Coca Cola history.

Each of the three blogs has a different focus on a core product or concept of the company, while reaching out to the individual users of the products. McDonald’s shows what good they do for society, and with General Mills, their focus is expanding the joy of baking while highlighting their product. Coca Cola, considered and iconic brand by many, keeps aficionados interested as they share the important events in Coca Cola history. While all the bloggers are employees, they express a belief in the product creating a unique human perspective from within these companies. The majority of blog posts also have readers comments that results ins strong sense of community identity around each blog’s subject matter; a definite lesson for those interested in starting their own corporate blogs and to begin to interact with their customers.

[UPDATE] Community 2.0 contributor, Scott Monty Consigliere for crayon and writes the Social Media Marketing Blog at scottmonty.com, was quick to highlight a point from our original post: “…I take issue with the wiki lumping Rose's blog in with the other corporate blogs. From what I can tell, she's an independent author whose blog is sponsored by a General Mills product - nowhere on her site is she identified as an employee of the company. In my view, this is very different from a corporate blog.” Great catch Scott. There is a big difference between a corporate blog, where the focus is primarily about the company and its product(s) and is most if not all cases writing is from internal employees, to a blog that is sponsored by a corporation. One is a chance for the company to express their particular perspective on any number of related topics, but a sponsored blog, may simply be a branding opportunity. In this case, Gold Metal Flour is associated with a well-known baker and writer, even though she may cover topics and products that could in fact be competitors. Actually going back and looking through the list, I believe this is the only sponsored blog out of the other corporate blogs. Thanks Scott for pointing this out.