This is bad decision. Why not just promote the blog feature? Why not simply better integrate the feature with the main sites? There's no activity on blogs because people don't know about blogs, not because people aren't interested. A tiny link at the bottom couldn't do much.
I am a very old high rep user (with hidden communities) and I don't know how to post a blog yet. I know that it exists and I have read them several times and I once wanted to even post, but it seemed pain in the ass because it wasn't easy to do. I even had to ask another user for that. Not to mention, login across the service wasn't working seamlessly.
How it could have worked:
Just like big "Ask Question" link, if there was a "Create Blog Post" link on top (maybe little smaller) or on profiles or besides small chat link, then it could have worked.
If blog posts of a user could be displayed on profile page of that user, it was definitely going to work because in a way, we could decorate our profiles using blog posts and we could easily read posts by other users.
If blog posts could appear in homepage question stream, it could definitely work (maybe, only hot blog posts).
Yes, the feature I am suggesting can attract low quality blog posts, but it can be easily controlled. A high rep requirement for blog posts and peer review can do the magic.
It's still not late guys...