When you first start a new blog
 

what is your first few steps to bring in traffic?
I usually pay for a little bit of advertising, see how much of that traffic retains after the ads expire and if it's half of what I'm aiming for by the end of the month, I let it stay how it is and then let SE traffic grow slowly.
What do you do?

SE traffic, and do some link trades with other websites. Maybe install a traffic trading script on the blog.

i make about 30 past dated posts. throw in a couple trades with other blogs. add a few inbound links to it from one or more established sites of mine. nothing that special i do not think. i do add in a site map and analytics on every blog though, it seems to help in my mind at least.

ICQ me for free advice :)

will do :thumbsup

Depends what kind of a blog I am aiming for. I rely mostly on internal(network) links and SE traffic though. With original updates that Is(If that's what I'm going for). The base plugins are all-in-one-seo, sitemaps generator, pagenavi and a few more.

Um...make it good? So people will actually want to read it?

I use those all except pagenavi, thanks for the suggestion. I'll look into it though.

I submit to several blog directories and it brings me my first traffic before seo traffic starts to come in.

Mostly internal links (network) and SE traffic doesn't take long for that to happen, then do directorys and linkdumps as well as hardlink trades...

Most blog directories aren't worth the linkback. I usually link go after some solid trades and try to link creatively from within my own network...not just other blogs and not just sidebar links.