If you’ve ever been turned off by a weak handshake or a person’s business attire, you understand the power of first impressions. In business, that power is often held by your company’s website and other customer-facing materials. Sloppy or poorly executed marketing content is like having a tattered welcome mat at your door or peeling paint in your lobby — it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Too often, business owners think they can just copy an image off someone else’s website and use it in their own materials. Even if that image is a logo of a company sponsoring your event, or a photo of a product you’re selling, you are violating that company’s copyrights unless you have its permission to use those images.

The risk of giving a blanket license to your content doesn’t mean you should immediately pull up all your social media stakes. But for creative types who want to keep exclusive rights to their work, or for businesses that don’t want to give out any rights to their photos or ideas, for example, it may be worth doing some comparative “Terms of Services” shopping.

Traditional advertising still has its place and word of mouth is king, but where some businesses are missing the boat is in realizing if they don’t have a solid presence online, their customers will create a brand for them, whether those businesses like it or not.