7 βWords tell the story
While a picture may be useful for gaining our site's visitors' immediate attention, words will directly engage and modify their beliefs.
Each word, consciously or subconsciously, holds a whole vista of meaning for each of us, based upon our accumulated interpretation of our past experience. Each additional word qualifies what we have already read, so judicious selection and sequencing of words will dramatically affect how we react to what is written.
Each time we react, we will modify what we believe, even if only a little, or just for the time we are reading. However, if the reactions reinforce each other, they can have a big effect. We can see this when observing great orators enthral crowds, inspiring hope, or whipping them into a frenzy.
We are telling a story, so just like reading a novel where the author is attempting to use words to build out the author's world in the reader's head, we are writing to build up a belief-world about us or our topic in our readers' heads. Pictures may wow readers, but words will change them.
People are very creative in what they will interpret from our words. Unless we are trying to play around with their thinking, we can make it easy for them to read what we write, and in the way that we want them to understand it. However, while words provide the content, judicious use of grammar and punctuation will aid in the delivery.
In all this, except for legal and scientific terms that are meant to be accurate, it is not single words that make the difference to beliefs, but the word pictures that a careful narrative builds that will. Beliefs need emotions for their power, but single words or phrases in isolation do not generate that power. It is the buildup that a narrative fosters that releases the emotional backing for changing beliefs.
As a comparison, watch all the absolutely fantastic artists and their creations in The Creative Talent Of These People Has No Limit βΆ 11. Some works have obviously involved hundreds of hours of work, and we are rightly amazed by their results. But how long after witnessing their creations do those emotions last? Do they change our beliefs? If we already have some similar talent, they may inspire us to do something similar, or take it in another direction, but will we change our beliefs because of them? Likely not.
However, a couple of hours spent writing an article can produce a narrative that can change minds and even beliefs, because they can tie together emotions and thoughts that readers have not thought of in those terms. By writing, we can become the catalyst of internal changes in people that can affect their lives from then on. Even if the words don't have an immediate conscious effect for them, they will be absorbed into and modify the internal meanings of other words and emotions they hold within.
They can sit there in their subconscious, awaiting being invoked by other writings that may tip them into their consciousness and lead them to actions other than they might have done without them having read what we wrote. What we write is always planting seeds within the psyche of our readers, awaiting other occurrences in their life to water them into growing within them, and those occurrences might just be the words we write that come right after. As writers, for relatively little effort, we can instigate great changes within our readers, more so than a whole lot of visuals.