well, I don't know what you mean by "effective" (cost-effective? high converting? something else??) ways of getting traffic, but search engine organic traffic is definitely better than social media traffic (although not for all industries and niches, I admit).
Just please don't ask me to explain how to get traffic from search engines because I'm not in mood to explain in detail at the moment. It would take me hours (literally) to address every single question you might have as a newbie on how to get traffic with SEO
Just look up tutorials on the forum on how to do niche + keyword research, how to plan out and structure your site, how to build links, what topical authority and EEAT mean and in which industries / niches these apply most, which technical issues you should do / fix on your sites, etc...
Lots of guides and tuts on these things on the forum, just spend a bit of time to look them up, and read up on them, and you'll be able to find more "effective" (whatever this means) ways of getting traffic.
Of course, you can also use PPC (Google ads, Facebook ads, etc) but I don't recommend PPC as a newbie, you'll lose $100s or $1000s within days if you don't know what you're doing. But PPC is more "effective" way of getting traffic than social media is, so yeah....
Or you can do forum marketing / advertising too. Popular forums are a great way to get eyeballs to your sites, but you gotta be active on the forum (or pay), and - above all - you gotta know the topic of your site in great details, otherwise people will be able to see through your bullshit and label you as a fraud, so you won't get traffic if you don't own your profession / skills
But yeah.... these are 3 "effective" ways of getting traffic that I can think of off the top of my head, choose whichever you like but be consistent and patient with it, otherwise...