How to create a blog to increase traffic?

Perhaps this is a basic question, however, how do I create a blog
related to my website that will increase traffic to my website?
1) create the blog
2) ping blog search englines
Will this increase traffic to my blog and then to my site?
Is blogging effect for traffic or not? I see so many love-hate things
about blogging.

Or is blogging (for traffic)  really about putting comments on blogs
with links to your site?
are there any tools that help with this?