Yeah there are a lot of factors .... Google Blogs are not as powerful as they once were - as they are spammy and lots of people were creating splogs .... so now there may be a period of time before your blog has any authority and authority equals the amount of time before your new posts are indexed. Digg and propeller are excellent to start things off .... but once that digg gets buried you may loose that page from index again. Submitting to directories and article directories - all help boost your authority. Adding new posts and then digg-ing, building links to them is also essential. The list goes on and on ....
yes through ping you can index your site more quickly.Social site submission will also help the blog to get indexed quickly.