Also it seems to me to use a standard action to get bardic performance / inspire courage which gives me and my allies a +1/+1 is a waste and it could be better used to use a full round attack and fire 2 arrows at my enemies.
Bardic performance, at least early on, doesn't seem to be that great. Any advice from a seasoned bard player would be greatly appreciated.
Partly it depends on how many allies you have that will use your Inspire Courage (as Cavall said) but also remember that it will affect your rolls for the rest of the combat too, so it will depend how long you expect the combat to go for. +1/+1 for one round isn't huge (and is probably not worth spending a round on) but +1/+1 for 10 rounds will be a pretty massive bonus. Aside from the +1 damage per hit, the +1 to attack will (on average) turn 1/20 attacks from a miss to a hit. If you have 2 front-line allies (doing one attack each per round), yourself (doing 2 attacks per round) and one caster (doing 0 attacks per round) you're looking at 4 attacks per round affected. We can probably add in 1 AoO per round from the group if their positioning is good, so you're looking at ~5 attacks per round for the group. That means once every ~4 rounds you've turned one miss into a hit, and you'll be adding +1 damage to every hit (let's say 3.5/round not counting the extra hit from the +1 attack). That's ~+14 damage after 4 rounds (and an extra hit). I'm making a lot of assumptions, but you get the idea. Work out how much damage you do per round without bardic performance (including hits/misses), work out how much damage your performance will add per round (including hits/misses) and then work out how many rounds it will take for the Inspire Courage damage to out-perform your full-attack action.
Also if you get a surprise round you could start your performance then, since you're only sacrificing a standard action.
Lastly there is a feat for 11th level to add some sonic damage too.
Look through your bard's feat list and separate out any that have to do with weapons or increasing damage or attack-bonus.
Throw those in the trash.
-- You are a bard. Be awesome at it.
Also, do not forget that you only have to spend an action to start inspiring. Maintaining the performance is a free action.
You are not paralyzed or incapacitated just because you started it, thankfully.
That makes it much less of an investment.
Beyond that, being an archer is expensive, it'll be a while before you have to worry about anything else, feat-wise.
Lingering Performance can triple your rounds of performance each day.
At level 7 you can start a performance as a move action, so it is inspire competence and 1 arrow. More cool though, level 7 is also when you get haste, so spending your first round inspiring some hasty courage and the latter rounds raining arrows on your opponents is usually pretty good.
I'm not a fan of lingering performance. You almost never know that you will only need it 2 rounds more, so either you are ending your performance and hoping or not using the feat. Also, I find Bard's usually have plenty of rounds of performance anyway. If you really think you need more, I'd go for extra performance instead.
The bard generally has plenty of 'bard stuff' without needing to spend any feats on it, so I think keeping your feats for your archery instead is a pretty good idea.
My usual archer bard (my favorite bard) plan is to spend the first round buffing (something like the haste-inspire courage above) and every round after that shooting arrows. Usually that first round is enough to accomplish my primary job of support, so later rounds are just for fun. I build though to be ready for an emergency in later rounds though, particularly with spell selection. See Invisibility (for me) and Glitterdust (for everyone else) are available for invisible foes. A couple of cure spells so I can at least stabilize if someone goes down. Freedom of Movement for when someone is going to die in a grapple. Wands/Scrolls and UMD can also work with this. I view a bard as the emergency guy, if there is a problem, I'm going to have the solution. When everything is going well I'm happy to be shooting arrows, but that isn't my main job.
I like riving strike for an archer bard, add some save debuffs to the enemy so your caster allies are also being boosted by you.
The song depends on how many people you have using weapons.
With a witch and wizard and rogue, vs say an Oracle paladin and ranger... the second group will enjoy that bonus.
They'll both enjoy that bonus. The witch and wizard can summon critters and use [ranged] touch spells. The rogue needs all the attack roll boosts they can get to make those sneak attacks count, especially if two-weapon fighting.
About the only party that doesn't hugely benefit from a bard is a party that already has a bard. Even then, archetype and build make a big difference.
Blaphpers is correct. When it comes to a bard, an archetype can make a huge difference. I have one that's an Archaeologist Bard, which gets rid of the Performances. Instead, she gets bonuses to Disable Device and Perception, and Archaeologist's Luck which gives a Luck bonuse to every roll. And I mean every roll - saves, attacks, damage, and skills. It works like Bardic Performance, but it only applies to the bard herself. And anything that affects Bardic Performance or requires it as a pre-req treats this as if it were Bardic Performance.
Archetypes are nice: my favorite being the Sound Striker. Gives up 2 nominally useful bardic performances for something very intriguing: Weirdwords=sonic Scorching Ray. They benefit from the same feats you are already using on your archer (well, at least PBS and Precise Shot) and are very useful in the event you cannot get past opponent's DR or Spell Resistance (Bardic Performance is Supernatural, which ignores SR).
The aforementioned Discordant Voice feat at 11th level is fantastic. Also, if you are going the Extra Performance route, look at the Verbose Performer (doubles Bardic Performance range) and Master Performer (increases Bardic Performance by +1 across the board)...perhaps not PFS sanctioned, though.