How to do a good job of undergraduate advisement?

Among my other duties as a tenure-track assistant professor (in math), I serve as an advisor to undergraduates: they are required to meet with me and get my approval on their choice of courses before they can register.

I dread this job every semester, because I suspect that I do a poor job of it. Some of the reasons:

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  I have little sense of what career opportunities are available to students of moderate ability and motivation. I can probably help the very top students, because I enjoy reading and listening to first-hand accounts told by extremely successful people, but I have little sense of what is available in the "middle of the market".

  
  

  It does not help that this city is relatively economically depressed, and that I have learned the hard way not to ask people here "What do you do?" This seems to run counter to local etiquette, and when I do ask, people often describe work which sounds dull to me, and about which they don't seem very excited either.

  
  


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  There are a plethora of campus-wide programs, and periodically I get e-mails asking me to push various of these to my advisees. However, I don't really know anything about these beyond what I read in the e-mails, and in particular I don't have (and can't readily acquire) any first-hand knowledge of which are actually valuable and which are just empty organizationalism and/or some administrator trying to make him- or herself look good.

  
  


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  Students rely on me for information on what their graduation requirements are, but this is subject to rapid change and to misinformation which I can still find on the internet (despite me pointing it out to those responsible). I am constantly terrified of giving students bad advice which will delay their graduation.

  
  


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  In general, I am somewhat spooked by discussions with my colleagues who have invested a lot of time and energy in learning how the university outside my department works. I get the sense that there are a bunch of administrators pushing their pet projects, and colleagues who are involved with these seem a bit shell-shocked to me.

  
  

Despite all of this, I have the opportunity to help students, and I want to do a good job of it. What are some principles to keep in mind?