Bards shine due to their incredible buffs. When I was leveling my warchanter, I would run around hasted, with inspire competence, blur, displacement, rage up, the lot and try and simply out-dps things before they killed me. Don't forget that as a fourth level bard you can carry cure moderate wands for wand-whip between fights (or during if you have the twitch skills to avoid damage while topping yourself off)

Fascinate is an incredible ability once you master it, it allows you to immobilize packs of attackers and pick them off one by one. I used to run around in circles while training my enemies while singing then turn around and deliver a hard beating when done. A higher perform score will ensure more successful fascinating.

One of the melee bard's particular weaknesses is their low health, so bump consitution if you can. Greater false life when you can gain it. Heavy fortification is also a must have for any character and you can get it as early as level 9 from a nightforge gorget.

The helm from the orchard (necropolis pack IV) called minos legens is an amazing item and quite easy to get. It's minimum level 11, and provides you with an extra toughness feat (stackable 20 hp) and heavy fortification (crit immunity)

Bards get UMD as a class skill, so play on this strength. Right now, if you are maxing your UMD score, it will be quite weak and won't bring much to the table, but as you level up and get better skill ranks and gear, it will allow you to scroll heal yourself for 150+ health with scroll/wand enhancements.

Getting back to hirelings, you should look for the cleric hirelings which have the divine vitality ability. Which will be able to replenish your spell point pool quite nicely as you go, as well as provide healing between fights. I don't recommend having the hireling follow you, specially if you are new to the game and new to the quests. Once you reach level 9, the cleric hirelings come with raise dead, and you can command them to come and rez you if you die, provided they were not close and died after you did.