Pushing a new branch to a remote and tracking it

Is there a more elegant way to: 1) create a branch, 2) push it to a
remote and 3) continue to track it.

I noticed that:

git branch <branchname> HEAD
git checkout <branchname>
git push origin <branchname>

does not link the local branch to the remote.

I've seen other people do:

git push origin origin:refs/heads/<branchname>
git fetch origin
git branch -r (verify that the branch is there)
git checkout <branchname> -b origin/<branchname>

but it seems kind of the reverse of what I would expect to do. I know
I could also do the first thing and then delete/re-checkout the branch
with tracking.