In my experience the most effective thing you can do to generate traffic is detailed keyword research. Finding KW's with low competition but decent search volume and creating posts from these KW's could drastically improve your content even without much off-page / external SEO. This is a much better approach than aimlessly making blog posts about things just because they're relevant to your niche, but they could have 0 search volume and little impact on generating new traffic besides the subtle increases in authority to your site by continually adding content on a regular basis...