Hi Karen,
A lot of good points have already been brought up and Joshua Dorkin and James Vermillion nailed it.
I wanted to give a little feedback on what I have been doing. I was blogging on BP (although I have been slacking big time in the last few months), and blogging on my website. I gained a few clients through blogging on BP and a few through my own blog. But, the thing that has been working really well for me is creating a video about my blog post and putting it on YouTube.
I find a popular topic, create a blog post about it, then create a video basically covering the entire blog post. I then put that video on YouTube (5-10 min max video length) and anyone searching for that topic will see my video. The one thing I like to do is create a free info guide or include an extra bonus in the blog post on my site and that I leave it out of the video and tell everyone in the video I have a free download or a few more tips on my site about that topic and tell them to click the link in the description to access the blog post.
It's a good way to get traffic, provide good content, and become an authority in your niche (which leads to more clients). Plus, those videos will never go away...so the more you do, the bigger you get.
A quick example...if you are looking for people in foreclosure you can create a blog post about the Top 5 Ways To Get Out Of Foreclosure (just an example). Then create a blog post about it and included a 6th bonus tip in the blog post. Then create the video about the post telling people the top 5 ways....then says we have a 6th bonus tip for you on our site. The viewer will then check out your article. It's a pretty cool way to get traffic...because what's the point of blogging on your site if no one reads it?
