When they say "barely visible to the naked eye", to my naked eye, that meant that the sky where Neowise was located, is slightly lighter than the rest of the sky. I'd have never noticed it without binoculars!
To expand on the instructions to "sweep your binoculars", that really helps. Because Neowise doesn't look like regular stars, there's a bright aura coming from it (referred to as the "tail"
. As soon as it gets dark, I was able to scan around that area of the sky using binoculars, starting just under the big dipper, and moving back and forth and down until I saw bright area that was much wider than individual stars or planets. Then when I focused on that area, it was obvious that I'd found it.
The last thing I'd mention is, you can see it for hours after sunset. Being a complete astronomy newbie, I thought it would be like a slow moving shooting star, but I found that on any given night, you really can't notice it moving. So don't fret if you don't get outside to see it immediately after sunset.
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