If you are gonna play Brand, you might as well learn to play aggressively up front and own your lane striking fear into your enemy. The best way to do this is to learn to time Pillar of Flame to hit furthest back minions and hitting your enemy at the same time keeping them at bay. This will open up combo hit possibility with Conflagration while letting you the time to farm cs last hits which requires more precise-timing skills due to the far distance to keep in between you and the enemy and auto-attack speed being painfully slow. However get Sear second as this a low mana high damage skill when combo'd with other skill causes epic stun for easy ghanks, getaways, or with round of skills & Ignite almost ensure a kill for any below half-life(which you did playing aggressively by landing those Sear skill shots!). Also make sure to use Flash wisely as most don't expect you to use it to get behind them before you Sear them!

Greater Mark of Magic Penetration, Greater Seal of Ability Power, & Greater Glyph of Magic Resist, and Greater Quintessence of Replenishment.

I also like to substitute a Greater Quintessence of Ability Power when I know I don't need the ManaRegen for spamming skills for direct counter-enemies.

Doran's Ring is a great choice for almost any game style you play, but a must to be aggressive. Boots & Mana Potion will help against a lot of champs mostly so you can get into better positions to combo kill. This is heavily dependant on your enemy.
For those with skill shots, get Sorcerer's Shoes if you Started with Doran's Ring
For those with CS farming skills, Kage's Lucky Pick and a Meki Pendant helps.
Build Rabadon's Deathcap - Done!
Also finish off Meki Pendant to Fiendish Codex if you need that cooldown reduction to help assert kills eventually building an easy Morello's Evil Tome, but I would try to acquire Void Staff before the Tome if you can. Rylai's Crystal Scepter & Will of the Ancients are good to finish up, but if you have played aggressively even without getting many kills but securing team fights with your ults for your team you should hardly get to late games playing Brand well.

1- Pillar of Flame, 2- Sear, 3- Conlagration
At this point if you are doing well landing Sear rank that up twicce before ultimate Pyroclasm otherwise 4- Conflagration & 5- Sear (you don't even know how much a rank 3 Sear damage can prevent successful mid-ghanks or solidify yours & your teammate's kill)
After ult I try to finish off Sear but if my enemy is stupid enough to stand by minons build up Conflagration for easy combo with other skills. I also tend to level Pyroclasm when available for the shear damage output, but it can be delayed if you are owning. Then again if you are owning that ult will do nicely to help ghank the other lanes (alot of mids can do little damage to towers so ignore it if you can).

If your greedy save your ult for last; otherwise a pop up front can play a sever role at scaring enemy team and gives your other skills increased damage since you set their whole team ablaze. remember to save your stun for the enemy who needs it most in your fight rarely do you get to shoot it off more than once in a teamfight.
Remember also if an enemy champ is running and you can't quite reach him throw that ultimate on the minion line coming down and watch it skip to hear "SHUTDOWN!"

I hope you enjoyed reading. Of course there are many other strategies like leveling Conflagration first causing a lot of damage, but many good players can learn to counter it better than your other skills/combos. It won't set the world on fire, but I hope it can fire up your team if this guide helps you play better. ~Blouses!