I have no idea about [1]. I have a LI account but only ever go on to accept the random network requests and then ignore all the messages from people, since they are mostly cold asks for recommendations to openings at my company.

But for [2], isn't the obvious solution to buy a domain and host a blog or some type of site that you can share posts via an rss feed? That seems pretty standard to me and also helps everyone know where your internet house is.