We were told the earth would move, lesser devices would be swallowed into the yawing chasms of hell, the newspaper industry would be uplifted to glory, and our lives would forever change. Yet Wednesday’s announcement of the new Apple iPad leaves me saying, “That’s it?” It’s a big iTouch with a 3G plan.

There are a variety of powerful software products on the market for monitoring social media content relative to your brand or your competitors. Companies such as Radian6,Andiamo,Attentio, andSentiment Metrics have rolled out and continue to develop various tools to aggregate large amounts of data and help you analyze it. However, for many companies these tools are too costly, too complex, or require too much manpower to deliver results. We have been experimenting lately with two simple free tools that can get you a long way towards a better and more actionable understanding of your brand in the social media landscape.