Converting char to binary strings and vice-versa

Question

I need to store an 8-bit string into a char variable and vice-versa (convert a char into an 8-bit string). What is the best way to do this? For example, if I want to store the 8-bit string 01010110 I could do like in this post Convert from a binary to char in C

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int main(void)
{
    char *data = "01010110";
    char c = strtol(data, 0, 2);   
}

How can I do the opposite?