And being opinionated can also make those posts stand out on the search results pages, making them more likely to be clicked on. I had a very good illustration of this recently.
Being a climate change skeptic I did some Googling on the issue and noticed that a theatrical management company that runs a lot of Perth theatre venues had some pretty full on green policies in place. So I wrote what was quite an abrasive, though humorous post about this on my arts blog. It ranked highly enough in Aussie searches including the company name that a journalist for a local paper who was researching a story on the company saw my post and read it. He thought that the blog itself was unusual and interesting, so ended up doing a story on it alone. It can be found on page 2 of the issue marked 14/5.
I haven't received any direct SEO benefit from this, since the issues seem not to be indexed by Google. However I've definitely had some clicks coming in from people who read the story, since I saw these in my stats. And it has certainly helped raise my profile as a local blogger.
So, remember to be specific with your blog posts, and don't be afraid to be controversial. It can definitely get you noticed by media outlets with a much wider reach.