I have been using GitHub for quite some time now and I usually used to push my feature-branches and then start a Pull Request which I myself merged. I found it helped me keep track of where I merged branches.

But recently I have been reading more and more about how Git works and I realised that I can use the merge-commits to refer to when I merged branches.

So, what should I do when merging a feature-branch into master:  

Perform a merge-commit on master and then push it upstream **OR** Push the local branch and start a Pull Request? 

I have read [Introducing Pull Requests for a 2 person team - merge my own requests?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/291603/introducing-pull-requests-for-a-2-person-team-merge-my-own-requests?rq=1) and [Whats the work flow with 2 people on a project](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/98580/whats-the-work-flow-with-2-people-on-a-project) and [Should I open pull requests from a branch on the official repo or my fork?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/204575/should-i-open-pull-requests-from-a-branch-on-the-official-repo-or-my-fork) but none of them seem to answer what I am looking for.