The freebie blog sites are easy to use. They offer a selection of looks and layout styles. Some of them offer you the option to use your own URL (www.myownname.com as opposed to something like myname.blogspot.com).
Some may offer search engine optimization service (usually for a fee), so if someone searches on a topic related to your blog, yours shows up on one of the first pages rather than back on page 1,023.
As others have said, it depends on what you want the blog to be for. If for personal, I'd go with a freebie blog. If for business, I'd recommend WordPress and go with their paid blog services.
There are various ways to publicize your blog. Twitter is one good one, and people often use Twitter as a kind of blog. For example, say your day's blog entry is about a new log cabing quilt. You'd tweet something like "Made new log cabin quilt. See it at..." and then post a link to your blog page.